ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTEBOOKS XIX/III
ofluštvo antaopoloqov slovenije
Slovene anthropological society
Ljubljana 2013
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Front-page: Fishing with Ambonwari, Papua New Guinea (photo by Borut Telban, 2012)
Anthropological Notebooks is a peer-reviewed triannual journal of the Slovene Anthropological Society. It publishes scholarly articles, review articles, research reports, congress and seminar reports, book reviews and information concerning research and study in the fields of social and cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, biological anthropology, archaeology, and related disciplines. The language of the journal is English with abstracts and possible shorter texts in Slovene. Contributors are Kindly requested to follow the instructions given in the Instructions for Authors. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the editors of Anthropological Notebooks. For subscription (45 EUR per year, postage included) and submission of articles, please contact editorin-chief (borut.telban@zrc-sazu.si) or write to the above address of the Slovene Anthropological Society. Individual back numbers are also available (30 EUR each, postage included). The journal is distributed free of charge to the members of the Slovene Anthropological Society.
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ISSN 1408 - 032X
CONTENTS
Ana Lid del Angel-Pérez
Homegardens and the dynamics of Totonac domestic groups in Veracruz, Mexico..........................................5
Slavomir Bûcher, René Matlovic, AlenaLukâcovâ, Barbora Harizal, Kvetoslava Matlovicovâ, Jana Kolesârovâ, Lenka Cermâkovâ and Miloslav Michalko
The perception of identity through urban toponyms in the regional cities of Slovakia....................................23
Eyo Mensah and Imeobong Offong
The structure of Ibibio death prevention names...............................................................................................41
Suchismita Mishra, Yadlapalli S. Kusuma and Bontha V. Babu
Concepts of health and illness: Continuity and change among migrant tribal community
in an Eastern Indian city...................................................................................................................................61
Snezana Radisavljevic Janic, Ivana Milanovic, Milena Zivkovic and Dragan Mirkov
Prevalence of overweight and obesity among Belgrade youth:
A study in a representative sample of 9-14-year-old children and adolescents...............................................71
Borut Telban
The power of place: Spatio-temporality of a Melanesian religious movement................................................81
Aleksandra Wierucka
Modern forms of Buryat shaman activity on the Olkhon Island ...................................................................101
RESEARCH NOTES
Gregor Jurak, Marjeta Kovac and Gregor Starc
The ACDSi 2013 - The Analysis of Children's Development in Slovenia 2013: Study protocol.................123
BOOK REVIEWS Brotherton, P. Sean
Revolutionary Medicine: Health and the Body in Post-Soviet Cuba.............................................................147
Gupta, Akhil
Red Tape. Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India...............................................................149
Malefyt, Timothy De Waal and Robert J. Morais
Advertising and Anthropology: Ethnographic Practice and Cultural Perspectives........................................151
Danforth, Loring M. and Riki Van Boeschoten
Children of the Greek Civil War. Refugees and the Politics of Memory........................................................153
Weisbard, Eric
Pop When the World Falls Apart: Music in the Shadow of Doubt ................................................................155
Shepherd, Robert J.
Faith in Heritage. Displacement, Development, and Religious Tourism in Contemporary China................157
Samson, Jim
Music in the Balkans......................................................................................................................................160
Kapferer, Judith
Images of Power and the Power of Images. Control, Ownership and Public Space .....................................162
Homegardens and the dynamics of Totonac domestic groups in Veracruz, Mexico
Ana Lid del Angel-Pérez
Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales Agrícolas y Pecuarias, delangel.analid@inifap.gob.mx
Abstract
The Totonac are an ethnic group that have used homegardens as a strategy for production and social reproduction since pre-colonial Mexico. These homegardens, associated with a family dynamic exhibiting various stages of the domestic group cycle, are flexible elements that allow them to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Fieldwork in the Totonac area suggests that several types of homegardens are associated with different stages of the domestic group cycle. The author concludes that it is not convenient to approach the study of homegardens only through production logic, as this prevents observing the dynamics within them and perceiving their relationship with the organisation of everyday life and the domestic group reproduction in a changing context and with different styles of adaptation, resilience, storage, reprocessing and cultural continuity.
KEYWORDS: Culture, nuclear families, extensive families, survival strategies, social reproduction
Introduction
Since precolonial times, the region inhabited by the Totonac people has encompassed the Central Gulf Coast of Mexico, from the coastal plain to the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range. This region is part of the Mesoamerica geographical-cultural area, where the original people living there share certain cultural, material and ideological features (Ochoa et al. 1999 70).
During the classical period (600-900 AD), the town of El Tajin emerged as the most prominent cultural and economic center, until it was abandoned due to Toltecan-Chichimecan invasions (Manzanilla 1999: 168). Subsequently, the city of Cempoala emerged as the Totonac capital. At that time, the Totonacs were dominated by Mexica groups and became subjects of the Emperor Moctezuma. They were obliged to pay a heavy tax burden consisting of cotton, corn, chili, feathers, gems, textiles, and other products; consequently, this situation strongly influences the Totonacs to attempt to throw off the Aztec Empire by supporting the Spaniards in their conquest of Mexico. However,
ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTEBOOKS 19 (3): 5-22. ISSN 1408-032X
© Slovene Anthropological Society 2013
during the colonial period, the imposition of a new religion and servitude, the effect of diseases brought by the Spanish conquerors, and the rearrangement of indigenous peoples in highland areas, caused a decline in the Totonac population. It can be said that throughout their history, the Totonacs have been subjected to a series of processes that have led to a continual integration and reduction of its ethnic features.
Currently, Totonac territory has been reduced to what is now known as the Papantla region and the surrounding mountain area, in the Mexican states of Veracruz and Puebla (Velasco 1985; Daneels 2006; Rojas & Garcia 1999). They occupy a territory composed of a complex microenvironment that offers various opportunities and constraints for food production, so the landscape consists of a series of patches that include cropland, forests, thickets, and towns (Whitmore and Turner II 2000: 121-2). Given its importance for Totonacs' everyday life and reproduction, this area shows evidence of protection-oriented forest management. In this sense, Toledo et al. (2003) found that adaptive management includes the manipulation of various species, mainly those with multiple uses, as well as the understanding and application of ecological processes (i.e. crop rotation, landscape management, plant succession and interaction) in activities related to the local reproduction of the domestic groups, where homegardens represent a clear example.
Some archaeological evidence in connection to the use of forest and homegardens by the Mayas (Ford & Emery 2008: 151) has demonstrated that it was the knowledge of ecology and environment management of the ancient and modern Mayas that added flexibility to their adaptation to environmental and cultural changes. This can be seen in the diversity of landscapes in homegardens and private orchards, which strengthen family solidarity and sustenance, while reflecting contemporary species that exist in the forest.
Garcia (2000: 53) has discussed the origin of homegardens, and highlighted their role as a support in the transition from an agricultural gathering society to another sedentary society, in which the cultivation of plants around the house was a way to bring closer food resources to domestic groups. Similarly, due to their intensive production, homegardens are linked to high population densities (Killion 1992: 8; Whitmore & Turner II 2000: 121-2), since the presence of such gardens might be able to support highly populated agricultural societies, such as those that flourished in tropical America in the first millennium BC and which possibly also played an decisive role in the domestication of plants and training of existing farming systems. Moreover, in those societies in which monoculture was predominant, homegardens met some specific consumer needs, as well as growing various species to supplement the diet.
Sanders and Killion (1992: 29) point out that because Mesoamerica agriculture focused on growing plants with a high energy content (such as corn and sweet potatoes), homegardens created adjacent to houses had different crops aiming to complement and enrich food. Garcia (2000: 50) notes that the loss of soil fertility in humid regions may have been a serious problem for growers in prehistoric Mesoamerica; the cultivation of homegardens thus emerged as a strategy to meet nutritional needs. Whitmore and Turner II, (2000: 122) argue that Mesoamerican farming systems were linked to the tribute paid to the Aztecs, specifically for the Gulf Coast of Mexico; hence, homegardens helped to solve internal food needs as well as paying the imposed tax. These authors distinguish
two types of homegardens in the Totonac territory: the first is the backyard homegarden or calmil, which provided domestic groups with vegetables, fruits, spices, medicines and fibres, and the second is the typical cocoa or fruit orchards. The difference between the two is that the former was possibly related to local livelihoods while the second was linked to trade and tax payment to the Aztec Empire.
Several authors have discussed the importance of homegardens. However, most studies had focused on biological aspects, such as the management of species diversity and the number of species converging in one space but at different strata. Most authors concur that homegardens are set in a seemingly chaotic arrangement of grasses, shrubs, vines and trees that offer an appearance of neglect and poor management and that, along with backyard animals, simulate the natural disposition of ecosystems (Clawson 1985; Caballero 1992). In turn, Moctezuma (2010: 50) points out the need to include in the analysis of homegardens all the environmental, cultural, physical and human resources involved in the production system. In this sense, the Totonac family homegarden is a traditional agro-ecosystem that mixes plants and animals useful in an everyday setting and a social space that reflects aspects of local culture, expressions of cultural contact and historical transformations (Del Angel & Mendoza 2004; Toro 2008: 54). Thus, the association between the various elements that support Totonac culture contribute to its social reproduction. Moreover, there is evidence that homegardens are more than merely agricultural systems that support production. They also allow social reconfiguration and socioeconomic changes that have endured in the history of human groups, constituting a representation of agro-ecosystems in history.
Howard (2006: 159) mentions that the structure, function and composition of homegardens has been associated with the household social structure; however, research supporting this argument is lacking. In this regard, most studies have focused on the homegarden's complex floral structure or its multiple ecological functions as an agroforestry system (Albrecht & Kandji 2003, Benjamin et al. 2001) as well as in its property of mixing different views and vegetation types (De Clerck & Negreros-Castillo 2000), both secondary and cultivated native and exotic plants. Management of the homegarden, its contribution with several key products for various areas of everyday life, and its dynamics with respect to changes resulting from exposure to modernity have been also studied (Mendez & Somarriba 2001; Peyre et al. 2006; Blanckaert et al. 2004). Therefore, this paper analyses the dynamics of homegardens and Totonac domestic groups aiming to show the interweaving of different social and ecological processes as a way to cope with the pressure exerted for various internal and external factors.
Methodology
The study was carried out in the Totonacapan region, which occupies an area of approximately 7,000 km2 and includes the Mexican northern state of Puebla and the center-north of the state of Veracruz. In this space, there are two clearly distinctive zones (Figure 1): the Sierra, located in the mountain range known as Sierra Madre Oriental and the Gulf Coastal Plain of Mexico (Velazquez 1995: 29).
Figure 1: Location of the Totonac studied area in Mexico. Source: Google Earth,
INEGI, 2013.
A total of 114 domestic groups in three municipalities is located eastward of the Sierra Madre Oriental, from the municipality of Coxquihui, Veracruz, in the lowlands, to the Plain of the Gulf of Mexico in the municipalities of Espinal and Papantla, Veracruz. The survey included open and closed questions of a descriptive nature. The data obtained aided in the generation of several statistical descriptive indicators, such as the identification of the stage in which the domestic groups were at the time of the survey, the management of the resources they have, and the use and soil productivity of the various homegardens. The quality of information was supplemented and enriched with research techniques such as interviewing various domestic group members, direct observation and secondary information. This approach added a dynamic support and helped to explain the internal organisation for each family structure, its operation and its link to diverse situations and their response to different critical moments.
The concept of domestic group development cycle has been used as an analytical tool aiding in conceptually and temporally integrating all the information (Moll and Mikelarena 1993). There were also changes in the structure and the composition of the groups as a process from the perspective of social reproduction (Robichaux 2005: 50; Robichaux 2002: 72), since homegardens also show change processes related to the domestic group development cycle.
According to Sanders and Killion (1992: 17-8), the continuity or persistence of backyard homegardens is related to a number of factors, such as domestic consumption, the need to trade, sell, pay, and to interact with other members of the community so that
homegardens provide a base for the reproduction of the social structure. Therefore, this study treated the domestic group at different stages of the development cycle as study units, i.e. kinship groups sharing a common space, either a plot or a house, recognised as familiar and in which they interact every day (Laslett 1972). In this regard, domestic groups were considered as a cultural residential family model labelled by Robichaux (2002) as the "Mesoamerican family system". Such a system describes a process of organisation and reproduction of domestic groups for a significant portion of the indigenous and rural Mexican people. This model also explains some specific high frequency behaviours of extended families, in terms of a cultural system or values that define behaviour patterns, and not just as an economic phenomenon. Therefore, this study considers the relationship recognised by people who share the same space, either biological, by marriage, affinity or ceremonial. The need creates affinity and the conformation or maintenance of ties between people who are not biologically related to each other.
Homegardens as a production strategy
Totonac homegardens form a complex floral structure and mix different association types of secondary or cultivated vegetation, as well as native and exotic species, which provide valuable products in various areas of everyday life (Del Angel & Mendoza, 2004). As a production strategy, the homegarden provides a balance among the needs of subsistence, the deterioration of natural resources, local knowledge, cultural contact, changing eating habits over time, and the way people relate to nature. For this reason, the inclusion and exclusion of plant species in the homegardens, as well as their diversity and importance indicate groups' cultural dynamics against different types of pressures.
In Totonac family homegardens, it is possible to perceive secondary vegetation management and conservation, the cultivation of native species and the introduction of others within various spaces. Hence, the classic backyard homegardens are found surrounding the homes, but also in growing areas, interspersed among commercial species and on the edges of agricultural land in areas where commercial species did not germinate, even on the perimeter fences of culture lands, and in those areas in which the depletion of soil fertility obliged leaving them fallow them for some time.
Thus, these four spaces can be considered as an extension of homegardens where the type of management, conservation, the combination of species or crops, and their mere existence define some internal and external pressures of the domestic groups.
Statistical analysis consisted of testing linear correlation between the main variables of interest, as well as multiple correspondence analysis to identify the variables that contribute to defining the group stages of the domestic cycle and its link with the different types of homegardens. The program XLSTAT ver. 2012 was used for all testing. Statistical significance was declared at the 0.05 level.
Results and discussion
Stages of the development cycle of the domestic group and homegardens
The interviews revealed the existence of large and nuclear domestic groups whose organisational responses are influenced by internal and external group assessments expressing the same development cycle and stages (Figure 2). Here, each stage reflects the quantity, quality, and resilience of natural resources at some time as well as the impact of modernisation processes, market and internal pressures on the stage dynamics. The shaping of the development stages ensures the production process and regulates cultural reproduction.
At the Extensive Stage, domestic groups are related by blood, marriage or affinity (either by upward, downward, lateral, political or ceremonial kinship). This stage implies the existence of two or more nuclear families living under the same roof or on the same land. All domestic groups within an extensive family are subject to a single authority, who is usually the elder or the person who has a great deal of recognition. Nuclear families can share all or part of the farmland and homegardens, but do not necessarily share domestic groups spending. Domestic groups in the Extensive Stage were arranged in two substages according to family size, ego (domestic group head respondent) age and his/her position in the group (Table 1). At the Initial Sub-stage (Ext.Ini.-DG) children are in the age of marriage. When one of the sons pairs off, the couple starts their life together in the father's house. It could be said that the expansion phase begins domestic group.
The second stage shows a large fully Mature domestic groups (Ext.Mat.-DG) which includes different kinds of relatives and generations. This domestic groups are larger, compared to the other groups. Also, as noted by Robichaux (2002: 88), domestic groups at the Extensive Stage, allow for a lower marriage age.
Table 1: Characteristics of Totonac domestic groups at different stages of the development cycle
Stages	Domestic	Family	Ego's	Average
	Groups	average	average farmland	
	(%)	size	age	(ha)
Extensive Initial Domestic Group	9	6.7±1.9	37.4±	1.0±1.6
Extensive Mature Domestic Group	34	9.0±2.2	55.5±	2.7±2.6
Nuclear 1- Domestic Group	29	4.5±1.3	42.0±	2.6±1.9
Nuclear 2- Domestic Group	13	4.2±0.8	59.7±	6.8±6.1
Fission- Domestic Group	15	2.0±0.9	69.3±	1.1±1.9
Table 1 show that the extensive Mature sub-stage (Ext.Mat.-DG) is the dominant mode, and in addition to the extensive Initial sub-stage (Ext.Ini.-DG) is slightly greater than the Nuclear stage. The Nuclear stage implies the existence of a domestic group composed of parents and children. This stage is also divided into two types; the first consists of a financially independent couple (regardless of the age of marriage), or with children under 16 years-old (Nuclear 1-DG). The second type consists of the existence of children of different ages and still single over 17, but it is possible that some of them have already left home (Nuclear 2-DG). Group survival is supported on independence, but not on individualism, because in times of economic crisis or illness, mutual assistance appears between biological or ritual kin (godparents, godchildren).
The Fission stage (Fission-G) involves the decay of a domestic group. The initial couple lives alone because the children have left home, but it may be possible that one of them remains to take care of the parents. As noted by Robichaux (1997) when analysing current Mesoamerican domestic groups, the increase in the proportion of some stage development, while reflecting environmental pressures, does not involve the breaking of the cultural sustenance of kinship.
The average size of domestic groups is larger in the Extensive stages, while the average age of "ego" (the respondent or domestic group head) is greater in the Fission and Nuclear 2 stages. Most people in these latter stages (even though remaining smallholders) possess the largest amount of farmland, precisely because land inheritance keeps the plot undivided or the property is not divided among sons in order to prevent its fragmentation. In nuclear groups, this system ensures a safe life for elder parents since the father culturally represents a family figure for affiliation and identification, but it does not ensure children permanence in the residence and, in fact, contributes to a higher age at marriage. Furthermore, in families in which members are migrants, this system favours no return, for there is no economic basis for survival after returning.
The average age of domestic group heads in the Nuclear 1-DG stage is greater than that of Ext.Ini.-DG, because age at marriage tends to be higher in conditions of lack of financial support. This argument is reinforced by the finding that in the Nuclear 2-DG stage, the head of domestic group's average age (the breadwinner) is high, so that there are single males of 30 to 38 years of age who assumed group leadership because their father become too elderly. Therefore, stages define individual access or exclusion to land, farmland productivity and the incursion of family members in other activities that support reproduction, such as international or domestic migration; thus, for Totonacs, organisation and group structure are strategies built on the privacy and individualism that support their survival and, in turn, are conditioned by their ethnic community culture and under the subjection of the will of the individual to the collective.
Groups
Domestic
' ' Domestic Groups %
—a— Secondary Vegetation Homegarden
...[}•• hedgerows Homegarden
—o— Backyard Homegsrden —m— Crop Hometjarden
Household with home gardens %
40 35 30 2S 20 15 10 6 0
o
o
o
-o
-- 20
-- 80
40
60
120
100
Ext In -DG	FxIMal-DG	Fissicr-DG	Nurfcar 1-OG Nuclear 2-DG
Figure 2: Totonac Domestic Groups stages by homegarden type
The backyard homegarden is common in all stages of the domestic groups' development cycle (Figure 2). These homegardens may be considered as a reproductive strategy that has persisted for the survival of the Totonac group and has allowed handling a series of internal and external pressures for the domestic group (Whitmore & Turner II, 2000, Sanders & Killion, 1992). As pointed out by Kumar and Nair (2004), homegardens are one of the oldest forms of management and land use; they are considered to be the epitome of sustainability promoting conservation of cultural diversity and showing a close association between nature and culture. For the Totonacs, nowadays a homegarden is a form of management that helps to mitigate the pressures of farmland fragmentation, caused by the mixing of various socio-economic and cultural factors, as discussed below.
The backyard homegarden, in which several species of plants and animals are grown, has been considered as a small-scale production system. This type of homegarden is located adjacent to the house and consists of a complex of domesticated or semi-domesticated plants, forming a complex structure (Ninez 1987; Price 1991; Caballero 1992). In some cases, the homegarden may function as an experimental or validation field for new species or methods (Yamada & Osaqui 2006: 229). In this study, backyard homegardens were present at all the domestic groups stages and in a high number of families that include them as a production strategy.
In turn, crop homegardens (formed with plant species of local value for Totonac life) are established in growing areas and were more abundant in the extensive stages, followed by the Nuclear 1 stage of the domestic group. Some crop homegardens developed spontaneously, but others are induced in lands planted with corn, beans and citrus fruits. Crop homegardens may include the induction of a multipurpose canopy aiding soil retention on hillsides to the production of food and timber (Figure 2). Moreover, crop homegardens provide spaces for plants, such as corn or beans that for various reasons did not germinate at other places, or plants that grow in crawl spaces or grooves. These spaces provide locally important leaves, fruit and tuber vegetables and decorative flowers, many
of which emerge only in the rainy season and are part of the secondary vegetation. This type of homegarden creates a soil cover that favours mostly steep slope lands by reducing soil loss and promoting fertility by adding organic matter (Glassman 1990). In the case of the Maya in Belize, Ford and Nigh (2009: 216) point to a similar management that corresponds to what is called the milpa cycle, in which some economically significant species such as maize are selected and its sprouts promoted after a forest stage, which is cleared with cutting tools and fire. At the cultivated stage, Mayan homegardens are complexes formed with corn as the dominant crop and several adjacent crops (Ford & Emery 2008).
The ecological interaction of vegetation in different environments, as well as its seasonal management, not only favours the conservation of natural resources, but also shows the Totonacs' deep knowledge of the environment they occupy. Here, a strong link between nature and culture is manifested in a way similar to what Ford and Emery, (2008) found for ancient and contemporary Maya.
Family size and the small amount of land that domestic groups in the extensive stage possess has led to the search for increased food production and materials in other areas, such as at the fences or boundaries of agricultural lands or pastures, which are handled as an extension of the homegarden. The number of hedgerow homegardens is greater than the amount in the Nuclear and Fission stages (Figure 2). These spaces are an arrange of different trees and shrubs species, mixed with low-rise herbs and grasses, and are usually planted and developed to form a barrier or to mark the boundary of an area.
Challenger and Caballero (1998) believe that hedgerow homegardens are not an indigenous traditional practice of land use and speculates on its chronological origin. For him, one possibility is that such homegardens are a remnant of windbreaks established during colonial times in windy areas; later, some species were selected and planted for the purpose of obtaining food, fuel or medicine. They (1998) also speculate that hedgerow homegardens may be a pre-Hispanic reminiscence of agricultural terraces built on hillsides to preserve and consolidate the soil using the roots of multiple use tree species. Furthermore, such spaces provide an ecological function connecting fragments of secondary vegetation and allowing the transit of wild animals.
Finally, secondary vegetation homegardens (locally known as acahual) seem to be less important in all domestic group phases (Figure 2). Second vegetation homegardens are considered by Gómez-Pompa & Kaus (1990) to be forest-gardens because this homegarden type results from being left fallow and natural secondary succession and less from selection; hence, natural regeneration and forest management are matched to protect valuable plants (i.e. useful or disperse species). Secondary vegetation homegardens are the result of a strategy the Totonacs use as a form of fallow after several years of land cultivation with annual species. This allows the development of secondary vegetation and of the herbaceous layer that grows unchecked in an attempt to restore soil fertility. As pointed out by Ford and Nigh (2009), this space is mostly part of a rotation acahual-cornfield cycle, because the field is not abandoned, but continues in use by collection, enrichment and dispersion of seeds of economic importance. Since the stage at which the field was opened, relevant species are selected, cultivated, and protected to develop
a canopy. This type of management, characterised by a non-destructive extraction and a rational use of vegetation shows (Toledo et al. (1992:105)) that the sustainable use of tropical forest is possible. However, such spaces have decreased significantly because of the reduction of agricultural land due to land heritage and cattle ranching (Del Amo 2008: 270). Consequently, fallow periods that allow the development of secondary vegetation have shorter intervals because of the increased pressure on land use.
For the Totonac, the type of products obtained and the use of spaces in second vegetation homegardens is related to the provision of local materials, mainly wood, firewood, fruit, fodder and some herbal species of cultural meaning (medicinal and ritual), and determined by food demand within the group, access to farmland and the impact of external factors that affect the market such as commercial production. All these factors influence the amount of managed species and the size of the acahual, as observed in the fieldwork.
Figure 3 shows that a great deal of domestic groups have access to land for cultivation, but its average size is small in the Nuclear-2-DG and extensive Mature- DG phases. The lack of access to land motivates an elongation of time permanence at the virilocal residence (home of the male's father) and raises the age for couple formation.
The succession of land rights by patrilineal ties is growing, and when there is enough land, it is distributed to the children when they start their own family and become separated from the parental home. This system has had an impact on the amount of individual land available for cropping and fallow intervals because when children separate from their father's home, the original size of the plots is reduced and residency practices are also impacted. As a result, the residence time varies according to the socio-economic conditions of the family. Interviews to extended families suggest that although patrilineal inheritance of land prevails, land is maintained as long as possible under the older man's domain, forcing new couples to extend the residence time at the parental home.
Figure 3: Domestic groups (DG), cropland owned, and number of plant species by
homegarden type
The low amount of land available for cultivation among domestic groups at the Extensive Mature stage has created a greater dependence on homegardens for reproduction and the species that they can grow, which also explains that at this stage the number of species established in backyard homegardens in the growing areas is higher (Figure 3). Family food demand at the Extensive Mature domestic groups stage is higher because it contains more members. A positive correlation between domestic group size and number of species managed at each type of homegarden was found (r = 0.5613, p<0.05). In contrast, the lack of alternatives to achieve economic independence encourages the abundance of larger domestic groups. The search for options is easier in a larger group; for example, in cases of migration (32%), the domestic groups became responsible for the close family of the migrant and creates a support space for them until the migrant returns (Del Angel & Rebolledo 2009: 12).
Backyard homegardens, located at all domestic group stages, are a sign of the importance that production has for all the domestic groups although the number of plant species managed at the different domestic group phases varies. A total of 75 different plant species at different levels and types of vegetation (grasses, shrubs, trees and vines) were identified.
Table 2: Average number of plant species grown in all homegarden types by Domestic
Group Development Cycle
Stage	Average number of species*
Extensive Initial-Domestic Group	34.0 ± 14.0
Extensive Mature-Domestic Group	30.0 ± 11.9
Fission-Domestic Group	18.0 ± 7.7
Nuclear1-Domestic Group	27.0 ± 11.2
Nuclear2-Domestic Group	24.0 ± 9.6
*Arithmetic mean ± standard deviation.
Crop homegardens do not have the same importance in quantity or diversity that backyard homegardens have, but they play an vital role in food and domestic group economy, because they are formed by temporal short-cycle species mainly oriented to human consumption. Thus, it contains spontaneous and cultivated species that appear each year (Table 2). Crop homegardens, as well as backyard homegardens, have the largest average number of species managed at the Extensive domestic group stages (Figure 3).
Species selection and enrichment of secondary vegetation is a common practice in Totonac culture, extended only in those domestic groups that have cultivation areas large enough to annually maintain a part at rest or in fallow after cultivating the land for three or more years. Thus, the existence of secondary vegetation homegardens depends on the amount of land available, as land lays fallow for 12 years on average. However, field work shows that this range is decreasing due to the widespread need to grow more food or earn more income.
Aside from its ecological importance, secondary vegetation homegardens are relevant for the conservation of some wild species used for medicinal, magical and religious purposes. Many of these species can be located in backyard homegardens, but some of its characteristics are preserved only in the "mountains", as in the case of Urtica urens L. (locally known as Chichicaxtle) and Cnidoscolus tubulosus Muell. et Arg IM Johnston (locally known as mala mujer). These plants produce a rash when in contact with the skin, but are part of traditional medicinal practices.
On hillside land, major colonising herbaceous and shrub species are plant of the Piperaceae family. Secondary vegetation is dominated by evergreen trees and shrubs, such as cedar (Cedrela odorata L.), chico zapote (Manilkara sapota (L.) Van Royen), wild avocado (Persea schiedeana Nees), black sapote (Diospyros digyna), mamey sapote (Calocarpum sopota Merr.), bay laurel (Laurus nobilis), Mexican rubber (Castilla elastica subsp. elastica C.C. Berg.), ojite (Brosimum alicastrum Swartz), pigeon wood (Guazuma ulmifolia Lam), cocoite (Gliricidia sepium (Jacq.) Kunth ex Walp and wild black cherry (Prunus serotina subsp. Capuli (Cav.) McVaugh) (Evangelista & Mendoza, 1987).
In the secondary vegetation homegarden, woody species necessary for food supply materials for everyday life used as common wood for poles, fences, firewood and fruits or edible flowers are preserved (Table 3). Moreover, if pressure in the demand for food is expanding, a secondary vegetation homegarden can be converted at some point to farmland, when this happens, it is common to allow the survival of useful species in the tree layer (i.e. fruit, timber, rubber or allspice) and prune some branches to prevent them shading annual crops (i.e. corn, beans, squash-pipian) or leave the stumps (logs) to allow tree buds grow and regain their foliage.
Secondary vegetation homegardens have an ecological value present in Totonac cosmogony as the habitat that fosters continuity of life. This type of homegarden allows the existence of wildlife, burrows and nests. Many of the animal species are part of the eating habits of the population since the limit of their ecological value surpasses everyday life and the reproduction of the group. In the case of species cultivated or protected in homegardens established within living fences, there are essential plant species for Totonac life such as timber, firewood, pods and flowers of commercial value, fruits, and fodder. These spaces are valuable only for the two Extensive stages of domestic groups (Figure 3). The average number of species found in all homegardens at each domestic group stage showed a broad variation.
Table 2 shows in quantitative terms how Extended domestic group stages handle a greater number of Nuclear groups and those who are undergoing Fission. Statistically, there was a positive correlation between the size of the domestic groups and the total number of species managed by stage (r = 0.5731, p<0.05).
Interviews with Nuclear groups revealed that they own cultivation land mainly devoted to cash crops, and that the income obtained allow them to obtain other products; therefore, labour and culture space cannot aim to protect or maintain worthless species from an economic point of view. In contrast, backyard homegardens provide significant plant species that do not involve economic values.
Analysis of variables
The existence of land for cultivation within domestic group was included as a variable for analysis, as well as backyard homegardens and crop homegardens with a range of crop species, the presence of hedgerow homegardens and secondary vegetation homegardens. As additional variables, the same analysis considered the stage of the development cycle in which domestic groups were at the time at which the study was carried out (Figure 4). The additional variables included in the analysis showed a differential performance. Extensive domestic groups (both, Initial and Mature) were placed in a dimension opposite to Nuclear domestic groups (1 and 2) and to Fission domestic groups.
Extensive domestic groups were located in the priority dimension that is related to its quantity. The clustering of Extensive and Nuclear domestic groups may indicate that similar features within each one of them prevail in relation to the traditional forms of reproduction associated with the handling and use of natural resources.
Figure 4: Stages of the Domestic Groups (DG) development cycle and importance of homegarden types
Extensive Mature domestic groups had statistically more weight in the analysis than those at an early stage (Extensive Initial domestic groups); however, the proximity of both groups to some homegardens (hedgerows-Yes, backyard 26-50, and crop 1325) highlights the importance that the amount of cultivated species represents for these groups. For Extensive domestic groups, Crop homegardens with 13 to 25 species and
backyard homegardens with 26 to 50 plant species are essential for social reproduction. The importance of this type of homegarden and the number of species managed in them for these groups are related to the amount of land under cultivation (Land/crop-Yes). On average, they handle a remarkably small surface, lesser than in nuclear domestic groups (1.63 ha for Extensive Initial Domestic Groups and 3.42 ha for Extensive Mature-Domestic Groups). For this reason, the existence of Crop homegardens and Secondary vegetation homegardens (secondary vegetation homegardens-Yes) are located in the opposite dimension, showing that when domestic groups do not have enough land, homegardens became more important. These data show a common feature observed in field work, i.e. that having land for cultivation is a sign that the domestic groups can allocate a small area or secondary vegetation that constitutes a later stage to the use of land or letting it lie fallow.
The position of domestic groups is depicted in Figure 4. No significant association was observed between the importance of homegardens and nuclear-type domestic groups (Nuclear 1-DG and Nuclear 2-DG), since it is located extremely close to the Hedgerow Homegardens variable (hedgerows-homegarden-No), indicating that this type of homegarden is important for such a domestic group. In contrast, backyard homegardens (backyard homegarden <25) are less diversified, since most of the species they contain are ornamental and woody (fruit or timber). However, the variable backyard homegarden (backyard homegarden-51-75) appearing in the same dimension, seems to be more diversified and not closely related to the nuclear stages, so this type of highly diversified homegarden is not important.
The fission stage of domestic groups (Fission-DG) is associated with the variable indicating that secondary vegetation homegardens are not important or have a low importance (vegetation homegardens-No). Such a situation possibly results from the fact the cropland area available for these groups is extremely low and therefore lacks the opportunity to let it lie fallow and allow secondary vegetation to recover it. This argument is confirmed by the close distance between the fission stage domestic groups and the absence of crop homegarden areas (crop homegarden - No) and crop lands (crop/land-No).
According to Figure 3, 53% of the domestic groups in the fission stage own farmland, but the average size of the plots is remarkably small (1.1 ha). The interviews showed that group size and family labor is extremely low at this stage. In contrast, the head of the domestic group, not necessarily the supplier, is older than in other domestic group stages.
Final considerations
The fieldwork has shown that the structure and function of existing homegardens is led by the continuity and change in Totonac family organisation and structures. Hence, the diverse homegardens become a dynamic tool to address internal and external pressures of the domestic group (Del Angel & Mendoza, 2004). According to the arguments of Robichaux (2002), who notes that the social reproduction of domestic groups is a process to perpetuate structural forms. The Totonac family homegarden can also be
considered dynamic and resilient to the diverse conditions and pressures that domestic groups undertake. Homegardens can grow or diminish in size or surface (e.g. number of species, area) and increase or decrease its importance, according to the area length and pressures exerted on the domestic group development cycle and its organisation. It is true that Totonac homegardens are not the most important source of economic livelihood for domestic groups, but it is undeniable that they support the continuity and perpetuate the culture, as in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, as has been indicated by various authors (García 2000; Killion 1992: 8; Whitmore & Turner II 2000; Sanders & Killion 1992: 29).
Homegardens have recurrently been altered at different moments of history. They exhibit a link between culture and nature, since the presence or absence of various spaces to establish homegardens displays the ecological management of nature and natural resources. The establishment and management of homegardens is based on traditional knowledge of the local tropical diversity, which allows the maintenance of fertility and soil and the prevention of the loss of key species for cultural reproduction due to deforestation, balancing arrangements of species, different spaces, management of seasons and ecological environments with the needs of production and social reproduction at the different stages of the domestic groups. For instance, Ford (2008: 192-3) noted similar dynamics for Mayan forest homegardens. Here, the breadnut or Maya nut (Brosimum allicastrum) was considered as an indicator, since its presence or absence at different historical horizons showed the relative importance of the species; however, its absence did not mean its disappearance from the landscape, but only an indication of a time when other species were more appreciated.
The opening of different spaces for setting homegardens other than backyard homegardens among the Totonacs is the result of internal pressures in the group and a response to the impact of external forces such as the market; therefore, it is an example of the dynamics of domestic group organisation. The convergence of ecological, material and cultural aspects of homegardens at a highly specialised era when the demands of the domestic market (cash crop monoculture), the decline of biodiversity, the increasing pressure of socio-economic factors such as changes in land use, and domestic food requirements (Del Angel y Mendoza 2004: 330) impose a need for change and continuity in homegardens through the reconfiguration of domestic groups structure and organisation to ensure production and reproduction.
Conclusions
The literature review allowed showing that homegardens' dynamics has been associated with the needs of production and reproduction of human groups throughout history, representing a mechanism to alleviate the demand for food and materials associated with human habits based on the traditional knowledge of human groups on nature and the environment. The analysis of a sample of Totonac domestic groups showed the link between the existence of spaces and species with the phases of the domestic groups development cycle, based on group size, as cultural factors that support social reproduction as a residence, age of couple formation and exclusion of members.
Farmland quantity and possibly quality, food demand and poverty, generate an intensely intimate dependence of the group's organisation, the structure and homegardens' constantly organising, producing and reproducing. The author concludes that it is not convenient to approach the study of homegardens only through logic of production, as this prevents discerning their internal dynamics and perceiving their relationship with the organisation of everyday life as well as group reproduction in a changing setting and to different styles of adaptation, resilience, storage, reprocessing and cultural continuity.
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Povzetek
Totonac so etnična skupina, ki že od časa pred-kolonialne Mehike domače vrtove uporablja kot strategijo za proizvodnjo in kot sredstvo družbene reprodukcije. Ti domači vrtovi, ki so povezani z družinsko dinamiko in kažejo različne stopnje ciklov gospodinjstev, so elastični elementi, ki ljudem omogočajo, da se prilagodijo na spreminjajoče se okoljske razmere. Terensko delo na področju Totonac kažejo, daje več vrst domačih vrtov povezanih z različnimi stopnjami ciklusa gospodinjstev. Avtorica ugotavlja, da se študije domačih vrtov ni primerno lotiti skozi logike produkcije, saj to preprečuje opazovanje dinamike znotraj njih in opazovanje njihovih odnosov z organizacijo vsakdanjega življenja, pa tudi z reprodukcijo gospodinjstev v spreminjajočem se kontekstu in z različnimi stili prilagoditev, prilagodljivosti, skladiščenja, predelave in kulturne kontinuitete.
KLJUČNE BESEDE: kultura, jedrne družine, obsežne družine, strategije preživetja, družbene reprodukcije
CORRESPONDENCE: ANA LID DEL ANGEL-PÉREZ, Campo Experimental Cotaxtla. Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales Agrícolas y Pecuarias. Veracruz 91700, Mexico. E -mail: delangel.analid@inifap.gob.mx.
The perception of identity through urban toponyms in the regional cities of Slovakia
Slavomir Bucher
University of Presov, slavobucher@yahoo.com
René Matlovic
University of Presov, matlren@unipo.sk
Alena Lukâcovâ
University of Presov, alena lukacova@unipo.sk
Barbora Harizal
University of Presov, barbora.nemethyova@gmail.com
Kvetoslava Matlovicovâ
University of Presov, kveta.matlovicova@gmail.com
Jana Kolesârovâ
University of Presov, jkolesarova@yahoo.com
Lenka Cermâkovâ
University of Presov, enka.cermakova2812@gmail.com
Miloslav Michalko
University of Presov, miki.michalko@gmail.com
Abstract
This work largely deals with the practical possibilities of the analysis of urban toponyms and their interpretation, which may be appealing in the field of multidisciplinary studies of sociology, history and geography. Our ambition has been to attempt to verify the statement that the names of streets, squares or parks in the historical centre of cities serve as indicators of official views and ideological impressions on the political, social and historical events, in the context of Central Europe. This study analyses the current network of streets in the historical centre of Bratislava, Trnava, Trencin, Nitra, Banska Bystrica, Zilina, Kosice and Presov. We will attempt to define basic tendencies in the process of nomenclature of streets, while we pay attention to their thematic focus. The study aims to determine the intensity of local, regional and national identity, based on
ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTEBOOKS 19 (3): 23-40. ISSN 1408-032X
© Slovene Anthropological Society 2013
geographical research, at the model territory of the historical centre of cities, through the names of streets and squares in the eight regional cities.
KEYWORDS: territory, regional cities, urban toponyms, identity, ideology
Introduction
The work aims to examine the perception of identity through the urban toponyms in the regional cities of Slovakia. The naming of streets, parks and squares refer to the significant historical events, social and cultural manifestations, in which the city actively participated. This study analyses the current network of stores in the historical centre of Bratislava, Trnava, Trencin, Nitra, Banska Bystrica, Zilina, Kosice and Presov. We will attempt to define basic tendencies in the process of nomenclature of streets, while we pay attention to their thematic focus.
The study aims to determine the intensity of local, regional and national identity, based on geographical research on the model territory of the historical centre of cities, through the names of streets and squares in the eight regional cities.
As stated in Macha (2010), if the concept of the country should be beneficial to society, it must offer an explanation, i.e. an understanding of the human experience. If a country is a cultural process between place and space, or cultural analogy of the physical environment of the body, i.e. relevant social environment of the individual, then toponyms are potentially fascinating material for the evaluation. How do people perceive and interpret space, how do they orient in it, how do they define the boundaries of identity, do they enter into the space their individual and collective experiences and projects, and how do they find the meaning of existence in a chaotic world?
Research objectives
What role will personalities have on the naming of the streets? What meaning do geographical toponyms have in the hierarchy of the cities' urban toponyms? Which identity will dominate? These are just few of the research questions that we will attempt to answer throughout this work.
In general, the basic problem of toponymic works is the lack of clear, theoretical reasoning about whether there is any sense in analysing geographical names. What is appealing about people, can toponyms offer? Toponyms can help us identify physical or cultural and geographical elements. They can clarify the process of the settlement of certain territory or the ethnic composition of the population.
Theoretical framework
The basic meaning of population identity in space and time is strengthening the knowledge of continuity of development. In the concept of rational and irrational expressions, the transmission of identity is realised through accepted and implemented human culture. If the identity has the ability of generational succession that social development still confirms, then the people of the territory are constantly being exposed to opposing forces.
The influence of linguistic theory in the context of geography has drawn attention to culture as uniform and normative set of traditions, models, opinions and material artefacts. With the concept of cultural geography, the traditional concept of culture has been replaced by the theory of cultural policy (interests). This theory is based on the opinion that everyday activities in the society are the completion of different cultural ideas and arguments in the struggle for power (Peet 1998).
Local names or toponyms play an prominent role in geographical research. Although in the traditional society of social scientists stereotype thinking prevails, by which is geography mainly dedicated to physical and geographical description and spatial distribution of population, services in the country, cultural geography, these archaic prejudices about the position of geography in the system of social and behavioural sciences are gradually being transformed.
The desire of cultural geography is to focus on patterns and interactions of human culture, material, as well as immaterial, with a relation to the natural environment. It also attempts to reconstruct migration links between regions in time and space. An important part of research in cultural geography is a perceptive understanding of the region, based on researching the various forms of identities that form or formed certain region. (Leighly 1978; Raitz 1973; Zelinsky 1988).
In recent years, geography focused on the dialectical relation between social processes and the natural environment as well as on the spatial relations in the wider context of critical geography (Rose-Redwood et al. 2010). Newer approaches dealing with the study of toponyms emphasise the need for attention to the process of forming names of the streets, i.e. determining the cultural and political events/institutions that participated in their establishment in practise.
Toponyms are not merely abstract names in the spatial structure of cities, but also represent the construct of social and power relations, through which the identity of the city and society is being formed (Berg & Voulteeenaho 2009).
Many authors influenced by the Anglo-Saxon school of geography (Azaryahu 1997; Azaryahu & Cooke 2002; Light 2004) focus on the relation between nationalism and post-colonialism, in which they seek to demonstrate how, through the control of state and local government, the political elite can promote its ideology also in relation to the nomenclature of the street network. Their interests, in particular, focused on naming significant urban spaces, squares, parks and names of streets that represent political and ideological representations of the state. The purpose of these names is to remove from memory of the nation, signs of the former ideological regime, while the process of defining new symbols of the current political class is continually running.
The classic example of how to use the armed forces to change the names of prominent buildings is the case of an international airport in Baghdad. In April 2003, just two weeks after the initial invasion of U.S. troops to Iraq, soldiers occupied the strategic site of the International Airport of Saddam Hussein, which was subsequently renamed to the International Airport of Baghdad. This act symbolised the triumph of U.S. troops and their foreign policy in Iraq (Pike 2007).
Geography, together with cultural anthropology is many times understood as a so-called colonial science (Livingstone 1992). From its origin, it served science and also fulfilled the power interests of the colonial powers, because their purpose was to cartographically describe all their new territories.
In English, we can translate the term toponymum as toponym, place name or
geographical name. At the root of systematic interest of geographers about toponyms,
stood the monumental work of the Swiss geography: Johann Egliho's Nomina Geographica (Versuch Einer Allgemeinen Geographischen Onomatologie) published in 1872.
Geographical interest in toponyms culminated in the first half of the 20th century and gradually declined after World War II. The interest in toponyms as indicators of physical, cultural and geographical elements and historical processes has brought a number of intriguing suggestions, but it was internally exhausted relatively quickly (Conedare, Vassere, Neff et al. 2007).
As David and Macha (2012) point out, in the 1970s, cultural geography as well as other social science disciplines went through dramatic transformations, and new theoretical and methodological approaches connected with the perception of geographical space and a country's beneficial aspects. Although interest in the perception of geographical space in current geography continues, toponyms in these studies appear only sporadically. While toponyms certainly are among the key layers of landscape stratigraphy, the concept of landscape in the last 20 years is characterised by a fundamental diversion from positivism (Nestor), cultural geography (Carl O. Sauer) to neo-Marxist, feminist and phenomenological approaches: a country is considered as an ideological construct, while the possibility of direct study of the country without any mediated representations (as in the case of phenomenological approaches) is sought.
Streets differ by their length, width, function, but above all by their meaning. In our article, we will attempt to outline current tendencies in the nomenclature of streets in regional cities by taking account of the geographical and personal toponyms from which they were derived. We will also show the connection between political elites and the topographic nomenclature of streets.
Political elites are aware of the symbolic power of toponyms, by which the centre space in cities is named. After the change of political regime in 1989 in the then Czechoslovakia, came the revision of historic facts, mostly those that formed part of modern history.
On the initial level, the nomenclature of streets serves as the set of characters, by which we can orient in the urban space. The name of the street in our minds creates a range of mental images, by which we can create a portrait of certain personalities, phenomena or events that are bound to the certain toponym.
Azaryahu & Kook (2002) emphasise the fact that certain urban spaces symbolise places with notable cultural and historical potentials for people and politicians. These places mostly are named after some famous person with a good reputation, or an event that influenced national interests in a positive way.
Early studies of hierarchy of street nomenclature in cities of the so-called socialistic block of Eastern Europe showed a wide range of symbols and characters used,
which were incorporated to the urban space in order to legitimise and institutionalise the ideology of revolutionary socialism (Light et al. 2002). Light et al. (ibid.) examined the changes in nomenclature of the street network of Bucharest, the capital of Romania, from 1948 to 1965. When the Communists took power, the massive process of changing names of streets that were not appropriate to the regime began. Their effort was to 'erase the memories' of the previous regime, by changing the names of streets and to strengthen the ideology of the communist agenda. The newly established toponyms celebrated numerous events and personalities of Romanian and Soviet/Communist nomenclature.
Jansen (2001) in his ethnological article defined the spatial scale of the protests against the Milosevic regime in 1996-1997 in different cities of Serbia. He attempted to point out the main places (streets and squares) of the largest cities, which serve as the initiators of resistance against the regime.
Renaming streets in the 1990s was a response to changes brought about by democratisation in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. These changes were related to the restructuring of urban space and the history that was marked by the ideology of communism.
In addition to the other countries of Central Europe, Hungary has a negative experience with changing the names of streets during communism. The work of Panolena (2008) analysed the changes in street names and various urban monuments, between 1985 and 2001. Toponyms in Budapest were a highly resonant topic of the discussions of the various political camps, including the national parliament and local government authorities.
Methodology
In this article, we used two basic methods about the definition and systematisation of the names of streets and squares in the regional cities of Slovakia. First, it is a statistical method, by which we quantified the data file (i.e. toponyms) and subsequently made a partial analysis and synthesis based on probability and theoretical considerations. An interpretative method of analysis (decoding) the text was used in the analysis of the street names and map of the historical centres of cities.
In addition to the methods listed above, we applied a comparative analysis, by which we tried to verify the perception of identity of the regional cities, as well as the relationship of the toponyms to a variety of historical and cultural specificities in the centre of cities.
In our article, we have adhered to the methodology of the work of the authors Siperski et al. (2011), who analysed the toponyms of eight Central European cities. The purpose of their contribution was the reflection of the identity of the cities, based on their names, in space and time; by their comparison, they came to the consensus that street names reflect a common history, culture, and political processes, of which the wider region of Central Europe was a part.
The primary source of data for our research consisted of the plans and the street network of historical centre in the regional cities of Slovakia. In total, we analysed 520
streets from eight regional cities. Since many urban toponyms showed signs of ambiguity, the authors of the article had to join the multidisciplinary analysis of the names. To achieve the maximum consistency, we needed to set precise criteria of their complex classification, using lexicographical and historical interpretation dictionaries of town's toponyms. With the actual identification of toponyms, we divided different names by scale into the following groups:
Local scale, local identity: analysing the city in its administrative borders. In this group are mainly various town names that are related to names of territorial units or architectural buildings, which name genealogy is related to physical-geographical (local relief, river) and human-geographical (church, tower, factory) attributes of that location. This category also includes streets that show the direction of how to find certain objects (Ku Kumstu, Pri Miklusovej vaznici, Predmestska, Pod Jasenskym vrskom). Furthermore, these toponyms can show significant events in the context of the history of the city (e.g. Nam. 4. Aprila, until 1989 this street symbolised memory of the liberation of the capital city, Bratislava, from fascist occupation).
Regional scale, regional identity: this is associated with the wider region of studying city, e.g. the Presov region and its historical, statistic regions. Duklianska Street, Levocska Street, Sarisska Street are examples of this. This category is also created by personalities, who by their activity helped with the development of culture, art, political self-determination or they helped with the economic development of the region (Janko Borodac Street, Pavlovic Square)
National scale, national identity: this is bound to a state. This group of toponyms should reflect the names of streets and squares that have national meaning. For example, we will show Hviezdoslav Square and Eudovit Stur Square, which were named after significant national people active in the formation of the Slovak language and literature.
International scale: hodonyms that are connected with the people and events or concepts outside of Slovakia (e.g. Wilson Embankment, John Paul II. Square).
The following classification characterised toponyms by the theme. The set of streets was classified into five basic groups: personalities (male, female), geographical names, historical events/institutions, craft and trade, and the last group of other toponyms.
The group of personalities was formed by the subgroups of toponyms, visible in Table 1, while male and female street names were separately analysed.
Table 1: Groups and subgroups of toponyms
Group	Subgroup	Explanatory notes
PERSONALITIES (MALE, FEMALE)	Politics	President, politicians, members of the military, aristocrats, kings, etc.
	Art and Culture	Poets, writers, painters, sculptors, architects etc.
	Religion	Saints, priests, bishops, popes, other religious personalities.
	Science	Personalities who have contributed to the progress of various scientific disciplines.
	Business and entrepreneurship	Businessmen, craftsmen, patrons of cities, managers.
GEOGRAPHY	Geographical names	Names of rivers, mountains, cities, regions, etc.
	Location names	Related to e.g. surroundings of a railway station or bus station, architectural buildings (castle, church, palace) other building hospitals, courts, etc.
	Signs (A, B)	A - defining direction, shape of objects. B - biological attributes.
HISTORIC EVENTS & INSTITUTIONS	(Same as group)	e.g. 1. Maja Street, names of banks, newspaper, social movements, historical events.
CRAFT & TRADE	(Same as group)	Places, where butchers, blacksmiths, millers, weavers, shoemakers worked.
OTHER	(Same as group)	Names of streets that could not be classified into any of these groups or subgroups.
Source: Siperski, Lober, Hersak et al. (2012). All titles in these groups were evaluated and then classified according to the space importance (scale): local scale, regional scale, national scale, international.
Among the analysed cities, Bratislava is the capital of the Slovak Republic, with a population of 431,192 (2001). To the east, Kosice (population 240,688 (2011)) is the second biggest city of Slovakia. Other cities are regional centres of autonomous regions with populations ranging from 55,832 (Trencin) to 91,638 (Presov). Although all the studied cities have the same national history, as they were part of Austria, later
the Kingdom of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and, from 1993, Slovakia, we can observe in their historical development certain distinctives that participated in forming their spatial and territorial shape. The realisation of the research was oriented to the historical centre of the cities. These zones currently represent the oldest and most recognisable parts of the cities. We excluded from the research the wider centre, which did not follow the historical part, as well as urban places that were built during a planned socialist stage of building, the so-called panel housing estates. The local population and tourists are the typical visitors of the historical centre, because they are part of the urban historical reserves and are characterised by multifunctionality. They generally have commercial, recreational and residential functions.
Urban toponyms according to genealogy I. Personalities
The highest proportion of toponyms of the analysed streets in regional cities in Slovakia derives from the surnames of famous personalities (45%) who significantly participated in the formation of society with their active contribution and involvement. In a more detailed characterisation of toponyms according to particular surnames, we can state that two subgroups prevail. Firstly, there are personalities who contributed to the development of art and culture of their work and creation (poets, writers, painters, sculptors, architects). Street names derived from the personalities in the field of culture and art make up almost half (48%) of all personal toponyms.
The second proportionally significant subgroup is represented by the people who significantly participated in the political and military leadership of the state (presidents, politicians, military members, nobles, kings, revolutionaries). This group represents a 24% share of all personal toponyms; therefore, we can claim that every fourth street in this category is named after a person whose professional life was somehow bound to politics or the military.
Ecclesiastic toponyms of saints, priests, bishops, popes and other religious figures are ranked at the third place according to frequency. Together, they represent a 16% share within the group of personalities toponyms.
The last place in this group of toponyms is represented by the street names linked to the personalities of science and business. Streets that have its name derived from a significant domestic or international scientific person represent a 7% share of the street names in regional cities in Slovakia in the examined category of personality toponyms. In Trnava and Trencin, are no streets of this subgroup at all (Figure 1).
It is worth noting that only 5% of all the streets named after a persona relate to the individuals devoted to business and trade, i.e. entrepreneurs, artisans, town patrons and managers. Streets of this subgroup do not exist in Trnava, Trencin, Nitra and Presov.
Gender emancipation is an notable phenomenon regarding the names of the streets after personalities. Female street names make up only 5% of the total of 237 streets having such names. Almost 75% of female street names occur in the subgroup of art and culture. For example, Podjavorinska Street or Soltesova Street in Bratislava, or Bozena Nemcova Street in Nitra. Female street names do not exist in Trencin and Presov. However, we take into consideration only the analysed territories of the historical core of the cities, not the administrative boundary of towns.
PREiOV [
I
Mill
° Art and culture
■	Politics
■	Church ■Science
■ Business and en tre preneur ship
10 20 Ml 10 50 60 10 SO 90 100
Figure 1: Spatial distribution of toponyms related to personalities (total) %
II. Geography
This category is, after the personalities, the second most significant group from which the street names in the regional cities of Slovakia are derived. This group includes some differentiated few subgroups: geographical names (rivers, places, regions, states, mountains, islands), location names (e.g. related to the area of the railway station, bus station, describing particular architectonic buildings of the city or city quarters and neighbourhoods); signs determining the direction, shape of an object and biological attributes.
This category involves 214 (41%) of the total number of 520 analysed streets. The most numerous subgroup is the streets with location names (146 streets).1
Signs determining the direction, shape and biological attributes are together with the geographic names (toponyms) equally represented among the names of the streets in the regional cities of Slovakia. Signs represent 17% of the total number of streets in the category of Geography and geographic names. Geographic names mostly occur in Presov (16% of all streets) and Bratislava (10% of all streets); there are no examples of this category in Trencin at all.
Additional categories associate the name of the streets with historical events, institutions (III) and craft and trade (IV). They account for a 6% share on the total number of street names (Figure 2).
1 One example of this kind of street genealogy of this category is Marianska Street (Marian Street) in the historic part of the capital city of Bratislava. For a non-involved visitor, the street could evoke an impression that its name is derived from the Virgin Mary, who is venerated as the Slovak national patron. Marianska Street was created in 1849 and on the 9th of November, 1849 the economic committee brought a proposal to the City Council to provide a name for the new street. A plenary session of the City Council named it Marianska Street. However, its name comes from the fact that on one of the old houses in the garden part of the street there was a stone statue of the Virgin Mary. Currently this statue decorates the walls of Hurban barracks with their tract facing Marianska Street.
Theme
0 10 10 30 40 SO 60 70 80 00 100
Figure 2: City toponyms according to genealogy - basic groups (%) Table 2: Urban toponyms according to genealogy (%) Cities Bratislava Trnava Trencin Nitra Banska Zilina Kosice Presov
	total					Bystrica			
Politics	11	8	0	16	16	2	13	17	16
Art and culture	20	22	21	29	9	29	16	21	14
Religion	6	5	9	3	14	5	10	0	11
Science	3	2	0	0	0	5	10	1	7
Business and									
entrepreneurship	2	1	0	0	0	2	6	7	0
PERSONALITIES									
TOTAL (MALE)	42	38	30	48	39	43	55	46	48
Politics	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Art and culture	2	1	4	0	2	5	2	0	0
Religion	1	1	2	0	0	0	2	1	0
Science	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	0
Business and									
entrepreneurship	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
PERSONALITIES									
TOTAL (FEMALE)	3	2	6	0	4	5	4	1	0
TOTAL (MALE,									
FEMALE)	45	40	36	48	43	48	59	47	48
Geographic names	6	10	4	0	5	2	2	3	16
Location names	27	28	36	29	30	31	25	26	23
Signs (A, B)	8	7	10	3	9	5	3	9	2
GEOGRAPHY									
TOTAL	41	45	50	32	44	38	30	38	41
Historical events,									
institutions	6	6	0	14	5	7	8	6	5
Crafts and trade	6	6	14	6	6	5	3	9	4
Other	2	3	0	0	2	2	0	0	2
TOTAL	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100
As shown inthe Table 2, the highest proportion of toponyms is derived from personalities (45%), closely followed by geographic toponyms (41%). Together, these two groups represent 86% share in the nomenclature of the streets in the regional cities of Slovakia.
Urban toponyms according to spatial importance (scale)
The following section summarises the spatial importance (scale) of urban toponyms. The names of streets, parks, squares were classified into four basic spatial groups: urban (local), regional, national and international scale, depending on the meaning of an actual street name. Some streets have more attributes according to which they can be classified into several categories. In this case, we classified a street into the group according to prevailing features and attributes of the name.
Table 3 shows that local (urban) toponyms (50%) dominate in eight regional cities. The second largest group involves national toponyms (33%). Regional toponyms account only a small proportion (4%). International names, names of foreign states and cities account for 13% of all the examined streets (Table 3).
Table 3: Urban toponyms according to spatial importance - scale (%)
Spatial importance Cities (scale) total		Bratislava	Trnava	Trenčin	Nitra	Banska Bystrica	Žilina	Košice	Prešov
Local scale	50	52	70	52	61	45	38	45	41
Regional scale	4	3	0	0	2	10	6	0	14
National scale	33	25	17	42	28	45	50	40	27
International scale	13	20	13	6	9	0	6	15	18
Total	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100
In a closer analysis of the regional cities, we can identify differences in the distribution of individual toponyms according to spatial importance. Local toponyms dominated in Trnava (70%), Nitra (61%), Bratislava and Trenčin (52%). In contrast, Prešov (41%) and Žilina (38%) have the lowest share of the streets in the group of local scale. Street names reflecting people, events, geographic names of national importance were the least frequent in Bratislava (25%) and Trnava (17%). Žilina gained the primacy in the share of the streets of national scale, thanks to the streets representing a significant person of Slovak art, culture and policy. Up to 50% of all the streets belong to the category of national scale.
As shown in Figure 3, the regional scale is the most frequent among the street names in Banska Bystrica (10%) and Prešov (14%). Regional toponyms of Prešov streets refer to geographic names. They are largely tied to the history, culture and ethnology of the Prešov self-governing region. For example, Duklianska Street represents a memorial dedicated to the historical events of the World War II in the area of Dukla Pass and the memory of fallen soldiers. The ethno-cultural subtext of Sarisska Street expresses the historic commemoration of Šariš as a significant cultural-historical region with specific Ruthenian folklore and significant cultural sites, whereas it was a Hungarian county in the past. The historical centre of Šariš region was the Šariš castle and since 1647 it has been the city of Prešov.
Regarding the spatial distribution of international toponyms, the most decisive factor affecting their frequency was the size of the settlement and its importance. The highest share of international streets was identified in the cities with the highest population, i.e. Bratislava (20%), Presov (18%) and Kosice (15%).
PRFiOV
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Banîïa BïyruK A
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TRtHC :Ki
TRtJJWA
PHATKWVA
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Figure 3: Urban toponyms according to spatial importance (scale) %
Due to its polysemantic character, the concept of identity often has an abstract meaning; therefore, it can lead to ambiguous definitions. The definition evokes the relation to individual identity, while simultaneously encouraging the research of collective identity, where the object of study is represented by a group of people with which it is identified (Barbard & Spencer 1998).
Several authors examining identity in their theoretical and empirical works point to the mutual interrelation of individual identity and collective identity (Refsing 1998). Belonging to a group means that an individual accepts its standards of behaviour as well as its mutual history and culture, i.e. social memory. Memory is an vital component of identity formation. History works as a structural component of social memory of a group identity. By means of a toponym analysis, we can identify basic elements of social memory that represent group identities in cities. A subsequent analysis of international toponyms in regional cities aid in creating a collective identity by means of international toponyms in Slovakia. These toponyms refer to the interrelatedness of international personalities and historical events that have participated in state formation process, as well as in the spiritual and cultural revival of Slovakia.
In Bratislava, we identified 35 international toponyms of which four represent politicians, members of the military and kings, 14 represent the personalities from the field of art and culture, four are associated with personalities active in the church (of which one is a female toponymum) and the group of personalities who contributed to the progress in various scientific disciplines is associated with one street. Geographical names are represented by nine international toponyms and historical events and institutions by three international toponyms.
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■	Regional ica e Nebafial scale
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The second place in the number of international streets belongs to Košice with its 11 toponyms. Three of them represent politicians and members of the military, six are associated with the personalities from the field of art and culture, and one toponym connected with science. In Košice, we can also find a street named after a female religious personality.
In Prešov, there are eight streets with international names. One is named after the personalities from the field of art and culture, two belong to the group of religious personalities. Two streets represent geographic toponyms as well as the toponyms of historical events or institutions. One street belongs to the category Other.
There are six international street names in Trnava. From these, for represent religious personalities (one female) and two are in the category of geographic names.
In Žilina, we have identified four international street names; one is connected to the personality from the field of culture and art, two streets after scientists and one street (female toponymum) refers to other religious personalities.
Similarly, in Nitra there are four international street names; one is in the category of politicians, two represent religious personalities (one is female) and one street is named after a female personality in the field of culture and art.
In Trenčin, there are two streets with international names. Both are the toponyms in the category of historical events/institutions.
In Banska Bystrica, there is no street with an international name.
The most frequent is the international toponyms of Czech origin. A high proportion of these streets are natural if we take into account the cultural proximity of both nations and common state of Czechs and Slovaks for over seven decades. In the analysed regional cities, nine Czech toponyms were found in Bratislava (Zizka Street, Jiskra Street, Palacky Street, Bezruc Street, Nedbal Street, Heyduk Street, Janacek Street, Dvorak square, Legionaires Street), three in Žilina (Burian gap/Street, Comenius Street, Halko Street) and Košice (Jiskra Street, Masaryk Street, Palacky Street), two in Prešov (Plzen Street, Legionaires square) and one toponymum referring to a Czech person appeared in Nitra (Bozena Nemcova street)2.
2 Czechian toponyms: Žižkova ulica (Zizka Street) (John Zizka was a Czech Hussite leader and warrior of the 14 -15th century), Jiskrova ulica (Jiskra Street) (John Jiskra from Brandys was a Czech captain, strategist and diplomat of the 15th century), Masarykova ulica (Masaryk Street) (Thomas Garrigue Masaryk (1850-1937) was the 1st President of the CSR), Palackeho ulica (Palacky Street) (František Palacky (1798-1876) was a Czech historian and cultural mover, author of the 1st synthesis of the Czech national history), Bezručova ulica (Bezruč Street) (the name Petr Bezruč is a pseudonym of Vladimir Vašek (1867-1958), the Czech poet who was influenced by symbolism and Czech modern), Ned-balova ulica (Nedbal Street) (Oskar Nedbal (1874-1930) was a world-renowned Czech conductor and composer of the operetta), Heydukova ulica (Heyduk Street) (Adolf Heyduk (1835-1923) was a Czech writer who became an important promoter of the Czech-Slovak relations), Janačkova ulica (Janacek Street) (Leoš Janaček (1854-1928) was a world-renowned Czech composer of classical music), Dvorakovo nabrežie (Dvorak Waterfront) (Antonin Leopold Dvorak (1841-1904) was one ofthe most important Czech music composers), Burianova medzierka (Burian Gap/Street) (the narrowest street from the Middle Ages named after the builder Burian Svetlovsky. He came from the village Vlčnov in Czech Republic), Ulica Boženy Nemcovej (Bozena Nemcova Street) (Božena Nemcova (1820-1862), born as Barbora Panklova, was a Czech writer. She was one of the founders of the Czech modern prose), Komenskeho ulica (Comenius Street) (Jan Amos Comenius (1592-1670) was a Czech linguist, naturalist, humanist, and philosopher), Halkova ulica (Halko Street) (Halko (1872-1945) was a Czech doctor who worked in Žilina), Plzenska ulica (Plzen Street) (Plzen is the fourth largest city located in the west of the Czech Republic), Nam. Legionarov (Legionaires Square) (refers to the Czech and Slovak Legions, which were the units of the foreign military resistance movement during the 1st world war.
The second place, in terms of the number of international toponyms according to their origin, was taken by Russia. These are mostly toponyms derived from cultural and political personalities. From the analysed cities, there are five Russian toponyms in Bratislava (Gorky Street, Tchaikovsky Street, Dostojevsky Street., Lomonosov Street, Moscow Street) and four are located in Kosice (Tchaikovsky Street, Gorky Street, Lermontov Street, Puskin Street)3.
The third place in the number of international toponyms was represented by Israel. These are mostly the toponyms of a religious character. The message of the Judeo-Christian heritage is hidden in the names of Israeli origin. There are two toponyms in Bratislava (Janska ulica (John Street) and Anenska ulica (Anna Street) and Trnava (Jerichova ulica (Jericho Street), Jeruzalemska ulica (Jerusalem Street)), and one toponym in Nitra (Marian Street) and Žilina (Marian square).4
It is necessary to note that the same international street name occurs in several cities e.g. Tchaikovsky Street (Bratislava, Košice), Jiskra Street (Bratislava, Košice), Gorky Street (Bratislava, Košice), Palacky Street (Bratislava, Košice), Legionaires square, Legionaires Street, (Bratislava, Prešov), Marian Street/square (Nitra, Žilina), 1st of May Square (Trenem, Bratislava).
Discussion and conclusion
The character of the street network as well as historic buildings is often the theme for postcards are part of a marketing promotion of the city. By using the hierarchy of the street network, we can define various ideological views of local institutions on social and historical events, which influenced the political formation of territory in local or national contexts. The file of toponyms that were analysed represents a reflection of the territory. A promenade through the historical centre of the city evokes in as an impression, as if streets passed on to the visitors part of the history, worldview or ideological intention that is reflected in their names. The political elite decides on the nomenclature of streets, city sites, by whom or by which institution or social events streets will be named. After the change of the political system in 1989, a transformation of social values and norms of
3	Russian toponyms: Gorkeho ulica (Gorky Street) (Maxim Gorkij (1868-1936), born as Alexej Maximovic Peškov, was a Russian writer, playwright, publicist, poet and revolutionary), Čajkovskeho ul. (Tchaikovsky Street) (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was a Russian music composer of the Romanticism), Dosto-jevskeho rad (Dostojevskij Street) (Fjodor Michajlovič Dostojevskij (1821-1881) was a Russian writer and philosopher, representative of the Russian literary Realism), Lermontova ulica (Lermontov Street) (Michail Jurievič Lermontov (1814-1841) was a Russian Romantic poet and playwright), Puškinova ulica (Puskin Street) (Alexandr Sergejevič Puškin (1799-1837) was one of the most significant Russian Romantic poets and novelists), Čajkovskeho ul. (Tchaikovsky Street) (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was a Russian music composer of the Romanticism), Lomonosova ulica (Lomonosov Street) (Michail Vasilievič Lomonosov (1711-1765) was a Russian naturalist, philosopher, chemist, and initiator of the University of Moscow establishment), Moskovska ulica (Moscow Street) (Moscow is the capital of the Russian Federation).
4	Israel toponyms: Jerichova ulica (Jericho Street) (Jericho is a city located on the west coast of Jordan), Jeruzalemska ulica (Jeruzalem Street) (Jerusalem is the capital of Israel), Janska ulica (John Street) (St. John was one of the Jesus' apostles), Anenska ulica (Anna Street) (St. Anna was the mother of the Virgin Mary), Marianske nam. (Marian Square) (The Virgin Mary was the wife of Joseph the carpenter of Nazareth. According to Christian faith she was also the mother of Jesus Christ).
behaviour came, which is widely reflected on the changes in the names of many streets that symbolised the relationship to the former regime.
There is not always a compromise between the elites and the population of the city when naming certain streets. Sometimes it happens that an existing street name is not used among the people even after several decades, some people identify themselves with the previous name, or they have their own name for a certain territory.
Especially in the historical centre of cities, people react sensitively to the change of street name made by local elites. Public space in the historical part of the city is therefore perceived more sensitively and also its planned changes, as opposed to peripheral areas. The periphery has less historical and cultural meaning. It is not understood by people as an essential element that has formed the morphological, cultural and historical structure of the city. The key role in shaping the identity of the historical centre of our cities is also the name of the central area of the city. It can be a street or a square. We can find the simplest variants of these names in Kosice, Presov and Bratislava.
In Kosice and Presov, the dominant street name is Main Street, in Bratislava Main Square. In the past, the main square was an important scene of cultural and historical events that had an impact beyond the city. From the genealogy of the names, we can mention the following: 1673: Forum Civitas, 1783: Haubtplatz, 1920: Masarykovo namestie (Masaryk Square), 1940: Hitlerovo namestie (Hitler Square), 1953: Namestie 4. Aprila (4th April Square).
Trinity Square is the central historical dominant of Trnava, named after the statue of the Holy Trinity. There is a tower, cultural centre, the Jan Palarik theatre and several townhouses.
In Trencin, the central area is on and around Mierove namesie (Peace Square). It has a lenticular shape. The genealogy of the name is significant: Intra Mona (15th century), Civitas (15th-16th c.), Teatrum, Rink, Forum Publicum (1771), Hauptplatz (1st half of 19th c.), Fopiac, Foter (1858-1911), Szalavsky Gyulater (1911-1918), Masarykovo namestie (Masaryk Square) (1919-1938), Hlinkovo namestie (Hlinka Square) (1938-1945), Stalinovo namestie (Stalin Square) (1945-1962), Mierove namestie (Peace Square) (since 1962).
In Nitra, the central square is named after the most important and most famous monarch of the homeland of the Slavs: Great Moravia. Svatoplukovo namestie (Svatopluk Square) is the central and relaxation zone of the lower city.
The historical centre of Zilina is composed of Marian Square, named after the statue of Immaculate Virgin Mary (Immaculata), which is in the middle of the square and built in honour of re-catholisation in 1738.
In Banska Bystrica, the main square is named after the Slovak National Uprising. The centre of the uprising was the town of Banska Bystrica.
Regarding the example of the main streets and squares in regional cities, we have attempted to interpret the space that has always been a centre of business, social and cultural life of the city. The high real estate costs makes this place only for profitable activities (shops, offices, financial institutions). This is the most accessible area of the city, and there is the highest population turnover. The names reflect the Christian-Slavic tradition of Slovakia that has been many times exposed to possible extinction (World War II, reflected in SNP Square in Banska Bystrica).
We consider this study to be rather unique in comparison to other current issues in the field of geography. We are convinced that the higher number of analogical works, especially in sociological and geographic journals, could contribute to the more sophisticated concepts and methods, which could be prompt further investigation. However, we believe that this issue will not remain unnoticed and will have own followers, who could enrich it with new knowledge.
This study is largely devoted to the practical options to the toponym analysis and to their interpretation. This interpretation can be of interest to the multidisciplinary field of research since the influence of sociological, historical and geographical topics can be observed here. Our main aim was to verify that the names of streets, squares, and parks located in the historical city centres serve as indicators of the official views and ideological perceptions of the political, social and historical events in the context of the Central European region.
From the above analysis, we can draw conclusions, based on which the collective identity of the city population, as well as their cultural and historical development can be defined through the nomenclature of streets, squares, and other public spaces. To reveal this dependence, a combination of quantitative (statistical and mathematical) and qualitative (interpretation of the text) methods was used. Based on the research of identity expression through the toponyms in the historical centres of regional cities in Slovakia, we have concluded that from the spatial point of view, local and national identities are the most important. At the same time, the frequency of a variety of international and regional toponyms in the historical city centres is subject to the specific conditions of development of the city.
Regarding dominant themes, the top three positions are occupied by the names of localities, and eminent people in the field of art, culture and politics (Table 4). The names of the localities are mainly related to local identity, since they describe a position or relationship to the significant place such as the area around the railway/bus stations, markets, architectural buildings (castle, church, palace), or other functional buildings in the city (hospital, court, administrative buildings, etc.). Representation of international toponyms of the street names depends on the size and population of the city. The highest proportion of international toponyms was recorded in the cities with the highest populations.
Table 4: Ranking of toponyms by thematic focus (three most significant groups)
TOPIC	Bratislava Trnava Trencin Nitra Banska Zilina Kosice Presov
Bystrica
2 1 1 1 1 2 2
3 3 2/3
2/3
3
Locality names 1 Art and culture 2 Politics Church
Geographic names 3
Crafts and trade
Historical events,
institutions
Science
Business
Signs (A, B)
Others
1	1/2	1
2	1/2	
	3	2
		3
3
Acknowledgements
The article is part of the grant research project VEGA No. 1/0325/12. Intra-urban structure dynamics in Slovakia in the first decade of the 21st century (2012-2014).
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Povzetek
Prispevek se ukvarja s praktičnimi možnostmi analize urbanih toponimov in njihove razlage, ki bi bila uporabna na področju multidisciplinarnih raziskav sociologije, zgodovine in geografije. Želeli smo preveriti trditev, da imena ulic, trgov in parkov v zgodovinskem središču mesta lahko služijo kot kazalci uradnih stališč in ideoloških prikazov političnih, družbenih in zgodovinskih dogodkov, v kontekstu Srednje Evrope. Študija analizira trenutno mrežo ulic v zgodovinskem središču mest Bratislava, Trnava, Trenčin, Nitra, Banska Bystrica, Žilina, Košice in Prešov. Poskušali bomo opredeliti temeljne tendence v procesu nomenklature ulic, osredotočili pa se bomo na njihovo tematsko osredotočenost. Namen raziskave je bil prek imen ulic in trgov v zgodovinskih središčih osmih regionalnih mest ugotoviti intenzivnost lokalne, regionalne in nacionalne identitifikacije s pomočjo geografskih raziskav.
KLJUČNE BESEDE: ozemlje, regionalna mesta, mestni toponimi, identiteta, ideologija
CORRESPONDENCE: SLAVOMiR BUCHER, Department of Geography and Regional Development, Faculty of Humanities and Natural Sciences, University of Presov, ul. 17. novembra 1, 081 16 Presov, Slovakia. E-mail: slavobucher@yahoo.com.
The structure of Ibibio death prevention names
Eyo Mensah
University of Calabar, eyomensah@unical.edu.ng
Imeobong Offong
University of Calabar, imebong2000@yahoo.com
Abstract
This paper examines death prevention names among the Ibibio in South-eastern Nigeria, from their structural perspectives. Ibibio death prevention names can generate and maintain some level of assurance and security that is vital for a child's survival, given the implicit assumption that spiritual forces of some kind are at work. These names are believed to link their bearers to their past, ancestors and spirituality. This paper argues that these names represent enriching morphosyntactic properties that provide a window to the grammatical description of the Ibibio language. Their syntax is not constrained to a limited set of structures, thus they are structurally versatile and open ended, representing the various types and functions of sentences in the Ibibio language. The paper concludes with the claim that, in addition to the referential contents and metaphysical presuppositions of these names, they have other formal structural properties that distinguish them from ordinary Ibibio names.
KEYWORDS: personal names, reincarnation, culture, anthromorphism, syntax, Ibibio
Introduction
The Ibibio people are found in the mainland part of the Cross River Basin in south-eastern Nigeria. They are the dominant ethnic nationality in the present day Akwa Ibom State. The population of Ibibio is 3.76 million (based on census demographic data). The Annang and Oro people are their closest neighbours within the state. They share boundaries with the Igbo in the Northwest hinterland and with the Efik Southeast ward. They share a south-west coastal boundary with the Okpobo/Ijaw in Rivers State. They are bounded in the northeast by the cluster of Ejagham nation up to Southern Cameroon (Udo 1983). The Ibibio language belongs to the Niger-Congo family of the Delta-Cross subfamily, which constitutes the Lower-Cross family within the enlarged Cross-River group of languages (Greenberg 1963, Faraclas 1989). Ibibio, together with Efik, Annang, Oro, Ekid, Usakedet,
ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTEBOOKS 19 (3): 41-59. ISSN 1408-032X
© Slovene Anthropological Society 2013
etc. belongs to this Lower-Cross family. The languages are mutually intelligible with Ibibio although the degree is unidirectional in some cases (e.g. Oro and Ekid).
Different cultures perceive and conceptualise the experience of life in different ways, and language functions as the primary carrier of this cultural nexus. A personal name is one of the important linguistic media for the transmission of the people's traditional heritage. This is because names and naming practices can best be understood in the context of existing cultures and traditions. Kuschel (1988) remarks that there is nexus between names and the socio-cultural life of a people, given the growing recognition that social institutions never develop or exist in cognitive vacuum. Names, therefore, relate with other parts of culture. They are marks of identity, solidarity and social cohesion. In Nigeria, for instance, it is easy to distinguish a Yoruba person from Hausa or Efik through his/her name, because names can (to a very large extent) define the concept of identity, whether individual or group identity. Therefore, Adebija (2000: 353) argues that '... each ethnic group expresses and identifies itself by the language it speaks and its cultural paraphernalia is shaped by its language.' A direct link is established here between language and identity, and names are important indices for the reconfiguration of identity and ethnicity. This is the reason Drury and McCarthy (1980: 310) argue that 'our names objectify our presence as participants in interpersonal transactions, not only for others, but for ourselves as well. In this concern, African names give insights into African culture and identity.
There is a richbody of literature on names and naming practices inAfrica (Oduyoye 1982; Ubahakwe 1981; Essien 1986; Mensah 2009) that has dealt specifically with the structure and meanings of Nigerian names. Others have investigated the pragmatics and sociolinguistics of Akan names (Obeng 1998; Agyekum 2006). Ngade (2011) investigates Bakossi (Cameroon) names in relation to its naming culture and identity. Gebre (2010) analyses the effect of contact on the naming practice of the Aare people in Ethiopia. In southern African onomastic literature, extensive works have been done on Zulu personal names (Suzman 1994; Koopman 2000), Xhosa names and nicknames (De Klerk 1996; Neethling 1996), place names and onomastic theories (Raper 1987). Olenyo (2011), and Dromantaite and Baltramonaitiene (2002) have examined personal names from the semantic perspective. They argue that names in the African context are not labels as the case in Western cultures, but have both denotational and connotational meaning, which are derived from existing phenomena with interesting information as language units. Moyo (2012) and Fitpatrick (2012) have equally interrogated the effect of colonialism and slavery on African personal names. While in some instances, such effects changed the ideological conceptions that were embedded in these names, in other cases, African names survived the onslaught of slavery and European domination. African names especially in the diaspora became elements of cultural retention, forms of resistance and means of identity construction.
Equally significant in the onomastic literature is the analysis of Igbo personal names from a morpho-semantic perspective in which it is revealed that the morphology and meaning of Igbo names reflect the Igbo cultural milieu and social universe (Maduagwu 2010). A number of works have been carried out on Ibibio name studies; Essien (1986, 2001) has investigated the structure and meaning of Ibibio names, as
well as providing a linguistic and cultural explication of these names. Clasbery (2012) undertakes a comprehensive analysis of Ibibio names and naming practices from an anthropological perspective. She argues that a number of factors influence the choice of names in Ibibioland, such as time, day, season, or place of birth. Other determinants include a child's look and behaviour, parent's life experience, philosophy, unusual spirit, political and socio-economic circumstances. Ukpong (2007) provides a comprehensive anthroponymic lexicon of Ibibio names and investigates the sources and origin of these names from a historical account.
Names and naming practices have enormous socio-cultural, spiritual and psychological significance in Africa and beyond. This is because names are believed to have inherent power that can indexicalise the lives and behaviours of people, either positively or negatively. According to Agyekum (2006), names are pointers to people's ways of life and socio-cultural experiences, and give deep insights into the cultural patterns, belief, ideology and religion of the people. Beyond these, names can also reflect how people relate with their social and physical environment, especially in their relationship with cosmic powers. Purham (2002) draws attention to the fact that there is a spirituality that binds African people together and guides their physical existence, and in the African cultural worldview, the essential ingredients and essence of everything, including humans, is spiritual. This observation is apt in the context of Ibibio names and naming practices, given that personal names are products of social, cultural and spiritual realities. Names are essential components of the Ibibio essence, especially in their belief in the cycle of life and afterlife. The present study, however, sets out to analyse Ibibio death prevention names from a structural dimension given that they offer sufficient grammatical information, which is a window to understanding the grammar of Ibibio.
Ethnographic and linguistic data for this study were obtained from both primary and secondary sources. This work is an aspect of a larger research project "The ethnopragmatic and structural analysis of Ibibio death prevention names". We employed oral interviews with 30 bearers of death prevention names in Ibibio whose ages range between 20 and 70 in Uyo and Itu Local government areas of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. We interviewed parents, traditional chiefs, church leaders and teachers. These interviews were mainly targeted at understanding the myth behind these death prevention names, their importance and functions. We sought to understand the morphosyntactic composition of these names in terms of their structure. We were able to categorise names into lexical items such as nouns and adjectives, we also identify grammatical processes found in names such as nominalisation, adjectivisation and compounding. The syntactic structure of names was classified into subsystems comprising the major sentence types and their functions in the Ibibio language. Secondary sources were obtained from students of the University of Calabar's (Department of Linguistics and Communication Studies) Matriculation Register and Ukpong's (2007) compendium of Ibibio names.
Figure 1: Map of the study area (Courtesy: Geography & Environmental Science Dept.,
UNICAL)
Ibibio personal naming system
Language mirrors society and Ibibio names are a reflection of who the Ibibio are as a people. This, in turn, is dependent on their religious and cultural beliefs, norms, values, ethics and worldview. John (2000) points out that like most traditional African people, the Ibibio view the universe as circumcentric and multidimensional, and perceived the world as "boundless" in spatial terms with an ordered mutually interdependent and ontological fused planes of the deities, ancestors and mythological beings. A presentation of some social categories of Ibibio names shows the socio-cultural influence of Ibibio traditionality on its personal names:
Table 1: Social categories of personal names
Social category	Personal names
The supreme God	Nséobót, Nséabásí, Ábásíódu
Clan or group deities	Ábásíattái, Áwáitám, Átákpo
War societies	Ékoñ, Ótúékoñ, Usenekoñ
Traditional medicine societies	Ídioñ, Ikwáíbóm, Akpámbañ
Inam society	Ekukinám, Nkántá, Nkénañ
Death prevention	Ndáráké, Ndáttá, Mkpánám
The Ibibio naming practice also portrays other aspects of its people's social and economic lives. Their sense of community and value for family relations are conveyed in names like Ówóédinié (people are wealth), Ówó (people), Udim (multitude) and Unánáówó - lack of people. Farming, fishing, hunting, trading and other traditional occupations of the people facilitated by the natural environment also form themes in the Ibibio naming system. Such names include Úso/Odom (blacksmith), Odió (dancer), Odioñ (mender), Ótóp (hunter), Oko (fisherman), Ékoñ udok (carpenter), Anyám uruá (trader) and Inwáñ (farm).
Some Ibibio names denoting places may also represent unexpected or accidental locations of birth, for example, Úsúñ úruá (market route), Úsúñ idim (stream road).
Strikingly similar to the traditional occupations' names is the recognition of geographical features as essential sources of Ibibio names: Ésit íkot (interior of a bush), Akái (forest), Ékáriká (harmattan), Inyáñ (river), Óbót (mountain), Utin (sun), and Édim (rain) etc. With this act of naming based on these resources the people seem to have close ties with their geographic environment which they exploit for some economic benefits. Children may also be named according to their order of birth within a family (Table 2).
Table 2: Names according to order of birth
Order of birth	Male	Female
First	Ákpán	Ádiáhá
Second	Udo	Nwà
Third	Udo - údo	Etúkáfiá
Fourth	Etokúdo	Unwanwà
Fifth	Udofiá	
This order varies depending on the people involved; this is however what was obtained in the area the study covered. Ibibio names also carry both positive and negative emotions; Idara (joy), Inemesit (happiness), Emem (peace), Ima (love), Ime (patience) etc. are positive emotion names. They connote positive feelings and desirable qualities and are believed to have effect on the psychological development of the name bearer. Names like Ufip (jealousy), Ukut (sorrow), Esuene (disgrace), Ubiak (pain), Usua (hatred) etc. reflect negative emotions. These names are responses to bitter experiences or unfavourable circumstances within the social environment. The time of birth can also determine a name that is given to that child. For instance, a child born at night is called Okon (Akdn or Okonanwan for female).
There is asymmetric pattern in the naming practice of the people given the influence of English names. Names like Edemsdn, Okonsdn, Ekeresdn, Idemsdn and Uduaksdn etc. (which are derived from names like Edem, Okon, Ekere, Idem and Uduak respectively). These names are modelled after English names like Wilson (son of William), Jefferson (son of Jeffrey), Edson (son of Edward) etc. In Ibibio, however, these names are merely onomastic innovation with no reference to rootedness or connectedness. This kind of linguistic manipulation of names has not been found amongst Ibibio death prevention names.
Some formal distinctions between Ibibio death prevention names and ordinary names
Death prevention names are given to children who undergo cycles of death and rebirth within the same family. The phenomenon is generally known as Esen emana (strange birth) among the Ibibio. Such children are usually given disgraceful names that portray them to the underworld spirits as worthless and unwanted by the biological parents or name givers. In this regard, the name is believed to hide the identity of the name bearer from the pernicious influence of the underworld forces. These spiritual forces are believed to control the destiny of the reincarnated child, including his right to live. The adoption of death prevention names, therefore, is a subtle psychology to deceive the underworld forces in order to disentangle the fragile children for their harmful influence and allowed to live. These names are pointers to the Ibibio social universe and cultural experience, reflecting their indigenous values, belief system, attitude and emotion (Mensah 2013b). On the surface, it may seem that these names do have the same formal structural properties, in common with the ordinary Ibibio names, apart from being distinguished by their referential contents. In the following discussion, we highlight some of the structural peculiarities of Ibibio death prevention names in contrast to the ordinary names, which contribute to their distinctiveness.
There are certain social categories in which ordinary Ibibio names may be divided into, for instance, distinction in sex, Okon vs Okonanwan, Etim vs Atim, Efion vs Afion etc. which involves the suffixation or alternation of initial vowels of male names to derive the corresponding female counterpart. This kind of sex differentiation in names can hardly be found in death prevention names, in which any sex can bear any name. The only instance of gendering is where a female name like Ekaete (father's mum) is given to a male child to give the impression that such a child is not desired, while invariably he is most needed given the patriarchal nature of the Ibibio society in which preference for male children is a long-standing tradition.
There is also the case of phonological differential in Ibibio ordinary names, which is a direct reflection of status differential given the class system of the people in their social organisation. Mensah (2009) sees this twist as a form of Anglicisation of indigenous African names which the colonial administrators and missionaries handed down to the coastal south-eastern people of Nigeria (Table 3). A high-low tone combination realised on a sequence of syllables automatically depicts a high social status while a high-high tone combination represents a low or inferior status.
Table 3: Anglicisation of indigenous African names
Ibibio names	Anglicised form Phonetic representation	Gloss
öfiön	offiong [ofioQ]	moon
esien	essien [esien]	strange
nyön	nyong [pon]	wandering
For example, if a professor and his driver are namesakes, Ibibio society refers to the man that has power and influence with the HL tone adaptation while the powerless one answer the HH tone combination irrespective of their referential contents and meaning. Conversely, Ibibio death prevention names do not have graded variety of the same name that indexes power relation. All such names are equal in social status.
Importantly, ordinary names in Ibibio may conform to the order of birth within a particular family as we can see in Table 2. In this respect, names can be used as an index of measuring seniority among children within the same family. Closely related to this taxonomic pattern is the practice of naming first sons through a process of reduplication of their fathers' names. Names such as Okokon, Etetim, Efefion etc. are correspondingly derived from Okon, Etim and Efion. This kind of symmetry cannot be established with the death prevention names which primarily function to facilitate essentialised existence.
The structure of Ibibio death prevention names
Ibibio death prevention names can be examined also from the aspect of their morphological and syntactic structures. These names range from simple lexical items (words) to complex sentences and provide a window to the grammatical structure of the Ibibio language. Death prevention names do not have any formal properties in common, as distinct from ordinary names. It is only in terms of their referential contents that they can be distinguished.
At the level of the lexicon, these names are primarily nouns and a few are adjectives as the data in Tables 4 and 5 show. A number of morphological processes are prevalent in Ibibio death prevention names. One of the most visible of these is nominalisation and adjectivisation of verbs as we can see below.
Table 4: Noun names
Underlying verb	Meaning	Derived name (noun)	Meaning
biono	obstruct	ü-biono	obstruction
sémé	lament	é-sémé	lamentation
dömö	tempt	i-dömö	temptation
wà	sacrifice	û-wà	sacrifice
bûéné	be poor	û-bûéne	poverty
sana	walk	i-san	journey
Table 5: Adjective names			
Underlying verb	Meaning	Derived name (adjective)	Meaning
tâhâ	be spoilt	n-tâhâ	spoilt
kari	be tricky	n-kari	tricky
bàk	be wicked	î-bàk	wicked
müho	be short	i-mük	short
diok	be bad	i-diok	bad
fia	be white	a-fia	whiter
The examples in Tables 4 and 5 are instances of lexical nominalisation and adjectivisation respectively, where the noun and adjective names are derived from verbs. The derived forms have meanings that are related to the same sense of the underlying verbs. We can make some generalisations about the morphological behaviour of the prefixes that motivate these processes. First, they are all derivational by virtue of giving extra morphological information and having varying distribution from their source verbs. They convert the source verbs into the nouns in Table 1 and into the adjectives in Table 5. The relationship between the prefixes and their stems is governed by the principle of vowel harmony and phonological conditioning of allomorphs. This evidence leads us to conclude that the formation of nouns and adjectives by the attachment of these prefixes goes beyond affixation. It involves the deletion or insertion of sounds as the case may be (Table 6).
Table 6: Attachment of prefixes
(a)	sânâ	walk
	i-sàn	a journey
(b)	mühö	be short
	i-mük	short
The nominalisation and adjectivation processes in Table 6 (a) and (b) respectively are phonologically well-motivated as (a) it involves the deletion of the final vowel of the source verb, which also affects the change in tone of the derived structure from that of the underlying structure from high to low in the final syllable. In (b), it has affected a change
from a glotallised consonant to a velarised consonant in the coda position to meet the phonotactic constraint of Ibibio consonants. There is also a loss of the final syllable of the underlying verb in the derived structure as a consequence of this change.
Another morphological process that is prevalent in Ibibio death prevention onomasticon is compounding as we can see in Table 7.
Table 7: Compounding of names
Compound structure Meaning
uruk-ikot
(rope + bush)	snake
mkpa-eto
(bark + tree)	bark
ntuen-ibok
(pepper + charm)	alligator pepper
okporcHsip
(nut + kernel)	palm kernel
The various instantiations of compounding in Table 7 reveal some structural peculiarities of Ibibio death prevention names. Uruk-ikot (snake) is an example of exocentric compound, which is headless. In other words, none of the constituents of this compound can function as a semantic head. This kind of compound expression lacks semantic compositionality and is characterised by what Katamba (1993) calls "semantic opaqueness". This implies that the meaning of the whole form is not predictable from the meaning of the constituent parts. Other examples of compounding in Table 7 are endocentric, which are headed in terms of the head-modifier relationship. The head is the dominant constituent of the entire compound word syntactically. The non-head component functions as the modifier of the head that specifies its meaning precisely. Spencer (1991) argues that the modifier element functions to attribute a property to the head much like the functions of an attributive adjective.
Semantically, endocentric compounds are transparent in nature in that the meaning of the component lexical items sums up the meaning of the entire compound words. They are more predictable than the exocentric compounds.
The study also identifies the predominance of noun phrases in the anthroponymic lexicon of Ibibio death prevention names (Table 8).
Table 8	i: Noun phrases in names
(a)	A-ma-mkpa
	3SG-love-death
	'A lover of death'
(b)	Mbara ikid
	nail tortoise
	'nail(s) of a tortoise'
(c)	Inua eyen
	mouth child
	'The mouth of a child'
(d)	Akan eren
	old man
	'An old man'
These noun phrases vary structurally: name (a) displays the agglutinative structure of the Ibibio morphology. The head noun mkpa (death) manifests concord with the verb ma - love and the personal pronoun, a-. The agentive prefix takes the verb stem which it harmonises with its containing syllabic vowel. It functions the same way as the -er suffix in English. The constituents of this phrase are the modifier (prefix + verb) and the head noun. The modifier precedes the head. This evidence reveals that Ibibio is a head-last language. The NP structures in names (b) and (c) also contain nominal modifiers, which are followed by the head nouns. They constitute the genitive (possessive) NPs, or what may be translated as the free genitives or of-genitives in English. The NPs in names (b) and (c) can also be interpreted as the construct of the 's genitive in English, example, the tortoise' nail or the child's mouth. The NP in name d has a simple MOD + H structure of an adjective (modifier) which functions attributively to assign a property to the head noun.
At the level of the sentence, Ibibio death prevention names display a wide variety of structural types and functions taking into account both simplex and complex classes. A simple sentence in Ibibio has the subject, verb, object (SVO) pattern. Ibibio sentences function basically as declarative, interrogative and imperative which correspondingly perform the semantic functions of statement, question and command. In the analysis that follows, we examine each of these categories categories and related semantic and syntactic classification of sentence types involving Ibibio death prevention names.
Names as statements
This name types are structurally sentences with the subject, verb and its complement (Table 9).
Table 9: Sentence names
Uwem e-di imo. Life 3SG-is wealth. 'Life is wealth.'
N-kere uwem 1SG-call life. 'I am called life.
E-ma mfo n 3SG-like goodness They like (what is) good.
The names in Table 9 give information which are intended for the listener. This information is stated objectively as statements of fact or truth conditional. The constituents of the name a include the subject and the predicate. The subject is the noun phrase which is dominated by a noun, uwem (life). The predicate is more of the copular verb, which also carries a 3rd person subject /e-/. This reveals an instance of the presence of double subjects which is a syntactic requirement of Ibibio declarative and interrogative sentences. imo (wealth) functions as the complement of the verb. In names (b) and (c), the subject NPs are dominated by nominative personal pronouns which represent the 3rd and 1st persons respectively. Mfon (goodness) and uwem (life) complement the verbs ma (like) and kere (call) respectively. From the pragmatic point of view, the examples (a) and (b) in Table 9 are used to depict the sanctity or value for life held among the Ibibio people. Living a healthy life is the greatest conception of wealth rather than the acquisition of material property. The Ibibio believe that life is sacred and should be valued above all things. The sentence name (c) in Table 9 also represents a cultural ideology of the Ibibio who wish good things for one another, their families and community.
The study also reveals a string of negative statement names in Ibibio death prevention anthroponyms. These names are usually identified by the introduction of the ke negative suffix to an affirmative or neutral statement (Table 10).
Table 10: Negative statement names
(a) N-dara-ke	(b) N-seme-ke (c) In] i-boyo-ke
1SG-rejoice-Neg 1SG-lament-Neg time 3SG- pass-Neg 'I do not rejoice' 'I do not lament' 'Time is not late'
(a)
(b) (c)
The sentence names in Table 10 have the structure, subject, verb and negation marker. The subjects are nominative pronouns in names (a) and (b) while in (c) ini (time) is the emphasised subject while 1- is the un-emphasised subject. The subject(s) and the finite verbs agree in number and person. The implication in these names is that they express conditions on which something else is contingent. For instance, the full cultural interpretation of a name like Ndarake is 'I do not rejoice until you live.' There is a conditional relationship that consists of two component propositions: the explicit antecedent and the implicit consequent. The two sets of proposition have separate core meaning and refer to separate sets of possibilities (Johnson-Laird and Byrne 2002). It is one's ethno-pragmatic competence that can facilitate the appropriate interpretation of these sentence names.
In name (c), the subject functions as the theme in terms of argument structure and expresses an action that is identified by the verb. The subject, however, has a hypothetical reference from a pragmatic point of view as it is not modified or its referent made known. One may wish to analyse this as a stylistic effect but it can however, lead to ambiguity. The name may also offer new expectations given the transcendence of time.
Names as commands
These are structurally imperative constructions which give order or command. They have no overt grammatical subject as the verb has the base form (Table 11).
Table 11: Command names
(a) Nyene ime	(b) Nyene ima	(c) Yama
Have patience	have love	bright
'Be patient'	'Have love (for this child)' 'Be bright'
It has been argued (Ndimele 2003) that sentences of this kind have implicit subject in the surface structure which is usually represented by the second singular pronoun Afo (you). Further proof of this claim can be revealed in a reported speech (Table 12).
Table 12: Reported speech names
(a) O-bo e-nie ime
3SG- say 2SG-have ime
'She/He says you should have patient'
b) O-bo a-yama
3SG-say 2SG- bright 'She/He says you should shine'
The evidence in Table 12 shows that imperative sentences in Ibibio have implicit subject which are usually nominative personal pronouns and which represent the second person singular. It also reveals that the verb roots have regular subject pronouns in the plural forms. The study also reveals the existence of commands with let-equivalent in Ibibio. This kind of command is used to express a suggestion, wish or desire (Mensah 2013a). It suggests a shared action by both speaker and addressee.
Table 13: Let command names		
(a) É-yâk rï-dùé	(b) É-yâk è-no	(c) N-tié dö
3SG-let ISG-offend	3SG-let 3SG-give	1SG-sit there
'Let me be guilty'	'Let us concede it'	'Let me be there'
Pragmatically, this kind of sentence pattern can be interpreted as a proposal for an action by the speaker since it contains a proposition in which no response is involved. In Ibibio, these sentences involved the 1st person singular and the 3rd person plural imperative, unlike in English where it is basically the first person inclusive imperative (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 936). The third kind of imperative in Ibibio is the negative imperative. This sentence has the negative prefix marker (which characteristically carries a rising tone) and the verb as the base (Table 14).
Table 14: Negative imperative names
(a) kusak	(b) kubiat	(c) kufre
Neg laugh	Neg destroy	Neg forget
'Do not laugh'	'Do not destroy'	'Do not forget'
These sentences do not have underlying subjects in their surface structures and like the positive imperative sentences, the second person plural is the implicit subject for such constructions. Comparing the structure of negative imperative to negative command in Ibibio, we discover that the negator of a command is a prefix /ku-/ with no explicit subject while that of a statement is a suffix /-ke/ with a cognate subject in the surface structure. This evidence reveals that negation in Ibibio is a highly morphosyntactic phenomenon.
Names as questions
Structurally, two types of questions or interrogative sentences can be found in Ibibio grammar, yes-no questions and wh-questions. Information on Ibibio death prevention names reveal the existence of only the wh-question type, which has the wh-operator at the beginning or end of the sentence (Table 15).
Table 15: Question names
(a) Anie fon?	(b) Nso ini? (Nsini) (c) U-behe-die?
Who good	What time	2SG-bother-how
'Who is better'? 'What time?'	'How does it bother you?'
Naturally, questions are used to elicit new information but in the context of Ibibio names, they are generally directed at no one but are merely rhetorical with sufficient pragmatic information and the strong elocutionary force of an assertion with the opposite polarity from what is apparently being asked (Han 2002). In the Table 15 names (a) and (b), the wh-words and the predicators constitute the structure of the questions while in name
(c), the structure has a noun phrase represented by a second person singular prefix and the predicate. The wh-word is an external argument of the verb within the predicate in (a) and (b) and an internal argument in (c).
Names as serial verb constructions
From our data, we identify Ibibio names which are clearly serial verb constructions, where a simple name has two verbs with their corresponding nominalising prefixes (Table 16).
Table 16: Serial verb names
N-dop u-se	(b) N-tim u-se
1SG-calm 1SG-watch 1SG- 1SG-watch 'I watch you calmly' 'I watch you closely'
The first verb in the series naturally indicates the inception phase of an event, while the second verb is the corresponding termination phase of the same event. There is no overt marker of co-ordination or subordination between the verbs. The two verbs profile a single process comprising two separate coded phases (Aikenvald 2003). They relate semantically and are understood as two phases of a unitary event. V1 naturally indicates the inception phase of the event while V2 corresponds to the termination phase of the same event. The two verbs in Table 16 do not have the same syntactic prominence. In name (a), for instance, the events in V1 are interpreted as occurring before those of V2, and V2 has greater prominence because V1 merely expresses the speaker's perspective since the watching is to be done where the speaker is present, physically or conceptually and not anywhere else (Nicolle 2007). In spite of the prominence of V2, it is V1 that can index grammatical categories like tense, aspect, negation, modality etc. For instance, the structure in Table 16 can be negated as follows (Table 17).
Table 17: Negated serial verb names
(a)	N-dop-po u-se
	1SG-calm NEG 1SG-watch
	'I do not watch you quietly'
(b)	N-tim-me u-se
	1SG- care NEG 1SG-watch
	'I do not watch you closely'
This evidence also reveals that negation is Ibibio can be driven by phonological and syntactically constrained allomorphs. There is creation of additional syllable (triggered by negation) from the verb roots through a process of suffixation. The vowels of the root verbs harmonise with the vowels of the negative suffix while the verb roots' codas assimilate with the onset of the negative suffixes. These are all features of V1.
Names as cleft constructions
Clefting involves a bi-clausal expression in which the higher or matrix clause is the focused part of the sentence, and the subordinate clause is related. However, in Ibibio death prevention names, the noun phrase that constitutes the nominal clause and the "that-" in that clause are deleted (Table 18).
Table 18: Cleft constructions names
(a) O-to unyime	(b) O-to ukeme
3SG-come (from) agreement 3SG-come from ability 'It is from agreement'	'It is from (one's) ability'
The clefting strategy here simply involves the introduction of the cleft pronoun o - which has a NP antecedent that is referential and not a dummy or semantically void as the case is in English. For instance in name (a) of Table 18, to unyime (come from agreement) is the predicative complement in the complex matrix clause. It modifies the foregrounded element and coindexes with the focused phrase. In terms of information structure, the cleft clause draws attention to the salient part of the sentence.
There are also cases of negative clefting in Ibibio names signalled by the introduction of the negative marker at the sentence final position (Table 19).
Table 19: Negative cleft constrictions names
(a)	Ini i-boyo-ke
	Time 3SG-past NEG
	'It is not late'
(b)	l-to-ho owo
	3SG-come from NEG person
	'It is not from man'
(c)	i-duo ho
	3SG-fall-NEG
	'It is not falling'
Negative clefting in Ibibio has the structure NP + verb + NEG + X, in which X could be a noun phrase or a prepositional phrase. In name (a) of Table 19, which shows both the emphasised subject Ini (time) and the un-emphasised subject i - it, the emphasised subject functions as the referential element and the focused part of the cleft while the un-emphasised subject acts as the cleft marker. However, in names (b) and (c), where the subject reference is superfluous, the un-emphasised subjects function as the NP antecedents. The NEG markers in 19 constitute part of the predicative phrases within the relative like-clause.
Names as conditional clauses
This kind of expression requires certain conditions or circumstances to be fulfilled if the action of the main verb can take place. Ibibio death prevention names furnish a few examples (Table 20).
Table 20: Conditional clause names
(a)	i-kpi-du- i-se
	3PL ASP live 3PL-watch
	'If we live (long), we will see.'
(b)	E-kpe deme
	3SG ASP share
	'If it is shared.'
(c)	M-me-e-ye yak
	COND ASP 3PL-FUT-allow
	'If they would allow (this child to live).'
The structures in Table 20 express factual implications or hypothetical situations and their consequences. They also describe real life situations. The conditional markers kpi and kpe in names a and b respectively are aspectual while me in (c) is modal. They combine with the respective verbs du (live), deme (share) and yak (allow), to signal the conditional mood. These conditional clauses have two possibilities, and their overall property is determined by the condition's tense and degree of realness.
Names as relative clauses
Ibibio death prevention names also function as subordinate clauses. They exhibit long distance dependency and particularise or describe nouns which are introduced by a zero relative (Table 21).
Table 21: Relative clause names
(a)	A-ma item
	3SG-love advice
	'One who loves advice'
(b)	A-bak e-di
	3SG-be early 3SG- advice
	'One who arrives early'
The structures in Table 21 are reduced forms of Table 22, which have the same basic meaning.
Table 22: Reduced relative clause names
(a)	Owo emi a-maa-ha item Person who 3SG-love-ES advice 'One who loves advice'
(b)	Owo emi a-bak-ka e-di
person who 3SG-be early ES 3SG- come 'One who arrives early'
The introduction of the relative pronoun emi (who), which yields implicitly in Table 21, performs two functions. First, it serves as a connector or coordinating conjunction linking the noun with the relative clause. The noun is pronominalised by who. It also functions as the subject of the relative clause. The relative clause post-modifies the noun and gives more information about it. The relativisation strategy Table 22 is the same though their internal structures are different. In name (a), item (advice) functions as the direct object of the verb ma (love). In other words, the verb carries a noun complement. In name (b), however, the verb di (come) is a complement of another verb, bak (be early) within the same relative clause. Names (a) and (b) are instances of restrictive relative clauses. They identify their nouns and establish some kind of contrasts. For example, name (a) presupposes that there were at least two people, one of which is identified as the one that loves advice. The same assumption holds for name (b) which indicates that one person arrived early in the midst of other people.
Conclusion
Death prevention names in Ibibio are pointers to the Ibibio socio-cultural experience and supernatural universe, which give deep insights into their cultural patterns, beliefs, language and spirituality. This study has investigated death prevention names in Ibibio cultural tradition from their structural perspectives. The Ibibio language is the source of these names; they are often formed by specific morphological and syntactic rules which may also trigger semantic and phonological information, and knowledge of these names is synonymous with knowledge of the grammar of Ibibio. The study discovers that the syntax of Ibibio death prevention names is open-ended and deeply versatile, since they are not restricted by any particular kind of structures. They also display formal structural characteristics in addition to their referential contents and metaphysical presuppositions which are distinguished from ordinary personal names in the Ibibio culture.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the Leventis Foundation, Centre of African Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK, to whom we express our deep gratitude. We also wish to thank all our respondents, particularly Mr. Edet Ukpong, Mrs. Immaculata Offiong and Ms. Eme Inem for their encyclopaedic knowledge of Ibibio culture and names, which has benefitted this work enormously. Any errors that remain are ours.
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Povzetek
Prispevek iz strukturalne perspektive preučuje imena za preprečevanje smrti med pripadniki Ibibio v jugovzhodni Nigeriji. Ibibio imena za preprečevanje smrti lahko ustvarjajo in vzdržujejo določeno raven zanesljivosti in varnosti, ki je bistvenega pomena za preživetje otroka , saj med ljudmi velja implicitna predpostavka, da pri tem delujejo duhovne sile neke vrste. Ljudje verjamejo, da ta imena poveže svoje nosilce z njihovo preteklostjo, predniki in duhovnostjo. Prispevek prikazuje, da ta imena pomenijo bogatitev skladenjske oblike, ki so okno do gramatičnih opisov v jeziku Ibibio. Njihova sintaksa ni omejena na zamejen nabor objektov, zaradi česar so strukturno vsestranski in odprti ter predstavljajo različne tipe in funkcije stavkov v jeziku Ibibio. Prispevek zaključuje, da imajo ta imena poleg referenčnih vsebin in metafizičnih predpostavk tudi formalne strukturne lastnosti, ki jih ločijo od navadnih imen Ibibio.
KLJUČNE BESEDE: osebna imena, reinkarnacija, kultura, antromorfizem, sintaksa, Ibibio
CORRESPONDENCE: EYO MENSAH, Department of Linguistics and Communication Studies, University of Calabar, P. O. Box 1412, Calabar Cross River State, Nigeria. E-mail: eyomensah@unical.edu.ng.
Concepts of health and illness: Continuity and change among migrant tribal community in an Eastern Indian city
Suchismita Mishra
Sambalpur University, suchismita44@gmail.com
Yadlapalli S. Kusuma
All India Institute of Medical Sciences, kusumays@gmail.com
Bontha V. Babu
Indian Council of Medical Research, babubontha@gmail.com
Abstract
As a community acculturates, health and illness concepts undergo change; yet communities continue to hold to their native logic, beliefs, perceived causes, recognition and classifications of illness and subsequent management of them. We studied these concepts among a migrant tribal community living in the slums of Bhubaneswar, an eastern Indian city. In-depth interviews were conducted with specifically selected community members, key informants and traditional healers. The community's perspectives of illness and its causes; and how the continuing cultural concepts and acquired modern knowledge and culture contact due to migration influence treatment seeking for various illnesses are discussed. The need for strategies for optimum utilisation of healthcare services is emphasised.
KEYWORDS: indigenous medicine, ethnography, migration, acculturation, beliefs, perception, India
Introduction
The World Health Organization has defined health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being (World Health Organization 1980). However, the meanings and perceptions of health, illness and health-seeking behaviour are not the same across cultures. Some scholars have reported that among tribal ethnic groups, health is seen as a functional rather than a clinical concept (Mahapatra 1994). As a cultural concept and as a part of social structure and organisation, the meaning of 'health' continuously changes and adapts itself to changes in the wider society. Perception, the process by
ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTEBOOKS 19 (3): 61-69. ISSN 1408-032X
© Slovene Anthropological Society 2013
which information is gathered and interpreted (Marshall 1994), is central to the analysis of social phenomena, and cultural analysis is crucial to the planning and implementation of health care services (Richman 1987; Raharjo & Corner 1990; Caplan 1993; Last 1993). Hence, to deal with the concept of health and illness it is necessary to include the causes of illness, the treatment seeking behaviour and the utilisation level of health care services.
People living in slums are vulnerable to ill health due to low socioeconomic status and poor living conditions, which are unhygienic and conducive to infections. Low levels of awareness and lack of access to preventive and curative aspects of care aggravate the situation. This ethnographic study has been undertaken among a tribal community living in urban slums, which migrated from a hilly forest area over the last 12 years. It is hypothesised that the migrant community has been changing at a certain pace along with their concepts of health and illness. The change in the surroundings and eco-system of tribal people compounded with intrusion of non-tribal elements into tribal domain play a vital role in the changing tribal ethos, value system and worldview. Hence, the concept of health and illness in the context of migration and acculturation is investigated. The aim of the present study is to understand the concepts of health and illness among tribal migrants living in Bhubaneswar, an eastern Indian city.
Methodology
The present study was undertaken in Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Orissa, an eastern Indian state. Tribal-dominated slums were first identified after pilot study, and from them four slums were selected on the basis of predominance of a tribal community. These four slums are dominated by Santals, one of the major tribes of India. Most of the Santal families have migrated from hilly forest areas of Mayurbhanj district of Orissa state and a few are from its neighbouring districts and have been staying here for the past 12 years. All the households of the slums were enumerated, and information on the total number of family members, their age, education, years of living in the urban area and occupation from each household was collected.
In-depth interviews were conducted with the general community members (29 men and 21 women) and key informants (13 men and 13 women) in the slums. This tool is intended to access the perception of the community on the health and health care services. During the selection of key informants, the guidelines of Spradley (1979) and Hudelson (1994) were followed. Key informants are defined as the individuals who possess special knowledge and who are willing to share their knowledge with the researchers (Hudelson 1994). They have access to the culture under study in a way that the researcher does not have. The key informant is someone with whom the researcher develops a special relationship of information exchange. A set of criteria is used to identify the key informants, and those interviewed are willing to share the information with the researcher. Headmen of the slum, the members of elected bodies, community health workers, the shop keepers, and members of local administrative bodies were identified as key-informants. The check-list for key-informant interviews included questions on the general perception of health with regard to gender, the symptoms of an ill person in gender context, the diseases found in
their area and the beliefs related to those diseases, etc. The traditional healers were also interviewed (six men and one woman). All these personnel were selected after information gathered during the regular field visits of the researcher during the year 2007. Traditional healers were interviewed to understand the cultural perception of various diseases, for which illnesses people come usually to them, the treatment and care provided by them for various illnesses, gender differences, etc. All these in-depth interviews were conducted by following Pelto and Pelto (1978) and Lengeler et al. (1991). The mother tongue of Santals is Santali; however, all people knew Oriya, the local language of the state. All interviews were held in the latter language. Prior to interviewing, consent was obtained from each participant by explaining the purpose of the study. They were audio-recorded with the consent of the respondents, and were later transcribed, translated into English and entered into a database. Content analysis was carried by coding the data. The data were subjected to thorough and repeated reading. The data were coded while reading. The coded text was reorganised under various themes and inferences were drawn. The study protocol is approved by the doctoral committee of Sambalpur University, which reviews ethical issues while also approving the research programme.
Results
Concepts of Health
Every culture has its own distinct explanations of health and illness. In the Santali language, the sense of health was termed as beskinijabe. A person is considered as healthy if he/she is able to do the work expected as per gender and age. The physical appearance of body implies health as good or bad. Fever is the often cited example indicating bad health. According to the traditional healers, the running of nerves, pulse rate, colour of the urine, colour of the eye, etc. indicate whether one is healthy or ill. Weakness of the body also indicates ill health. Alcoholic intake is metaphorically cited as an illness in their community, owing to its consequences on family and community; it is also claimed that alcohol intake leads to several other diseases.
From the key informant interviews, it is revealed that health is not anything other than the present condition of the body. 'Health' means the physical condition, and it is no longer linked with the mental or social condition. When it was asked how their health was, almost all study participants said that their health was good as they had no fever. The absence of any disease or illness is termed as good health; if fever is present in the body, it is considered that health is not good. Thus, the concept of health refers only to physical health. Broadly, the concept of health and illness varied according to the gender owing to the physical structure of the body, in addition to gender-related roles in society. According to them, illness is attributed to more than one cause and, hence, they seek different types of treatment from different sources, depending on the type of illness.
Concepts of Illness
The informants described ill health as appearing dull, weak and turning dark, lack of appetite, sleepiness, the inability to walk, the inability to talk, startling movements,
drowsiness, sunken eyes, pale and dry eyes, pain in the body, etc. Changes in the colour of urine and faster pulse rates also imply ill health. The symptoms of ill health for children are not taking food, lack of interest in play, sleepiness, hotness of the body and frequent crying. Physical characteristics such as pale colour of the body, rashes on the body, protruding belly and narrowing of buttocks also symbolise ill health.
Concept of health and illness, according to gender
We attempted to determine whether the health and illness concepts and prescriptions of the community change along gender lines. It was reported that as men and women possess sex differences, and as they differ in their physical characteristics, certain illnesses occur in women while certain others occur in men. The examples cited were men have hydrocele and women have menstruation-related illnesses such as white discharge (leucorrhoea) and stomach ache (phulbata). It is believed that women affected by phulbata cannot bear the child. Such women face severe humiliation in the community. Among men, some other diseases such as harris and garmi occur. In harris, men look weak and have dark circles below the eyes. In addition, whitish fluid oozes with urination. Garmi is the next stage of harris, and in garmi, wounds occur around the genitals and sometimes they bleed. Thus, they mainly acknowledged the differences in the illnesses experienced by men and women and attributed these differences to biological differences.
Types of illness
Illnesses are broadly categorised by the study population as mild and severe. However, the perception varied from the community members to the traditional healers. Severe illnesses are those that are thought to require medical treatment, and mild illnesses are those that do not need any medical treatment. Thus, illnesses that need urgent bio-medical intervention and those of long duration are considered to be severe illnesses. However, there are a few exceptions. For example, measles and jaundice are considered to be severe illnesses; however, modern medical treatment is not sought for these illnesses; instead it is believed and feared that if modern medical treatment is taken, the illness may recur and may even lead to death. Hence, only the traditional treatment by the traditional healer is sought for these illnesses; in the case of measles, seeking modern care is even a punishable offence in this community. The traditional healers reported that these illnesses recur if modern medical treatment is sought. It may also be noted here that for other illnesses the traditional healer himself advises people to go to the medical facility.
Illnesses with less pain and which occurs usually like cold, cough, and headache are considered to be mild illnesses. The evil-eye-related illness is also considered to be a non-medical type of illnesses, as it can only be cured by a traditional healer. People reported on the transmission of some illnesses. The concept of the transmission of diseases is gained from biomedical knowledge people gained through different sources. Thus, illnesses are also classified as transmissible illnesses (such as measles, diarrhoea, leucorrhoea, scabies, etc.) and non-transmitted illnesses. It may be noted here thatjaundice is considered to be a non-transmitted illness.
Traditional healers' primary classification of illnesses classified as 1) evil-eye-related illness and 2) non-evil-eye related illnesses. Again, the evil-eye-related illnesses can either be mild or severe. The mild evil-eye-related illnesses can be treated with herbal medicine along with chanting mantras; whereas severe evil-eye-related illness warrants animal sacrifice, and it is reported that the traditional healer has to put more efforts to remove the severe evil-eye effect for curing the illness.
Causes of illnesses
People perceived different agents and behaviours as causes of illness. There may be single or multiple causes for a single illness. The causes of illness are summarised in three groups:
1)	Supernatural powers as the causative agents: People have the belief that illness occurs if gods and ancestral spirits are unpleased with them, and also due to the evil eye, ghosts or jealousy; and if the person is frightened with fear, then also illness can occur. Everyone is considered to be in possession of a certain amount of supernatural power. It is believed that children are more vulnerable to the evil-eye. People believe that whenever someone remarks that the child is beautiful or healthy, the child immediately develops illness and becomes weaker. The evil eye is believed to affect not only children, but also adults. For instance, if anyone sarcastically or earnestly remarks that a certain person wears fine clothing, the evil eye begins to operate. Jealousy (hinsa), as a form of the evil eye is attributed to cause of illnesses, and such illness can only be cured by the traditional healer.
2)	Physical and non-supernatural sources as causative factors: In this category, illness is explained as being caused due to disobedience of natural laws. A number of physical or natural causes of diseases operate directly on the individual to produce illness. Some such causes as reported by the study population are as follows:
(i)	Due to food: foods that are considered to be hot in nature (such as non-vegetarian food, spicy, sour and oily food which are believed to develop heat in the stomach) are thought to cause illnesses. It is reported that not taking food in proper time results in disturbance of the stomach, and leads to illness. Alcohol intake is reported as one of the major causes of illness. The respondents felt that using fertilisers and pesticides in vegetable crops is another leading cause of various illnesses.
(ii)	Change of season: several illnesses (mainly the cold and cough) are attributed to seasonal changes.
(iii)	Working conditions: working under severe hot or cold or working in rain are reported to trigger illnesses.
(iv)	Change in usual daily routines: it is believed that if a person changes in usual daily routine such as changing the time of major meals, the time of bathing, improper sleeping time, etc. results in occurrence of illness.
(v)	Physical surroundings and pollution: people often reported and complained that their habitations/slums are surrounded by the city's garbage that is
dumped by the municipality. They often said that they are free from illnesses in their native area, as the native place is free from such garbage dumps and dirt, as well as that the air is so fresh, and the water is pure. It is reported that many illnesses occur due to the urban living conditions and polluted water and air. It is reported that change of place leads to attack of illnesses.
3) Contagious agents of illnesses: Touching the clothes and food of the ill person is strongly believed to cause certain illnesses. It is also reported that vectors such as mosquitoes and flies often transmit various diseases such as malaria. In addition to these, unwanted behaviour of the people is thought to be contagious in transmitting the illnesses. People stated that human behaviour that is against the cultural norms as one of the major causes of illness, including measles and other illnesses. It is also reported that having sexual contact with an ill person results in illness. People also mentioned that some diseases are hereditary in nature.
Discussion
In every society, a substantial and integral set of beliefs, knowledge and practices is related to the significant life experiences of health and illness. This is clearly visible in the present study. Tribhuwan (1998) observed that disease aetiology is an indispensable indigenous medical phenomenon of any community and precisely stems out from the meaning system (culture). In this study, people viewed health as the ability to work as per prescribed roles. Weinert and Long (1990) defined illness in terms of work. They found that people performed their work well are described as healthy even in pain or suffering from chronic illness or a life-threatening disease. Work roles are determined according to gender; thus the place and nature of work differ according to gender. Weinert and Long (1990) suggested that in a role performance model health focuses on the individual's ability or lack of ability to perform key roles, especially those associated with work and family responsibilities.
In the study community, health is seen as a person's ability to work according to his/her role; sleeping well, having a healthy appetite and being active. Illness is identified as a condition that interferes with normal daily activities. The study community reported various symptoms of illnesses where physical inactiveness is the central factor. In this regard, Foucault (1973) described that the symptom is symbolic of the activities that occur inside the body of the sick. The signs of sickness are actual signs of truth, and the symptoms themselves resemble a symbol of the illness. Symptoms provide the sick person and the practitioner an opportunity to understand the cause of an ailment. The symptom is the form in which the disease is presented (Foucault 1973).
The association between social, cultural, and economic factors and health has been reported extensively. In the study population, health and illness are viewed from the cultural point of view. The cultural interpretation is seen even for the illnesses for which the community accepts the modern biomedical; thus, the concepts are not separable from their native logic. The illnesses are classified on the basis of cultural explanation (for example, perceived aetiology) and severity. The treatment-seeking behaviour is often
based on this classification of illnesses. Green and Britten (1998) showed that subjective meanings influence how patients integrate treatments with everyday life, and other studies have also shown that lay beliefs about medication differ from standard biomedical interpretations (Jones 1979; Donovan & Blake 1992; Verbeek-Heida 1993; Marinker 1997; Conrad 1985; Mishra et al. 2012). Cultural ideas play a central role in determining who needs medical care, when and for what conditions/illnesses and with what results (Hahn 1995). Some illnesses are believed to be cured by herbal medicine, where as some are believed to be cured by allopathic medicine. Besides these two types of treatment, spiritual-based treatment by the traditional healer is also common in this community. Similar findings are reported (Bastien 1982; Neumann & Lauro 1982; Green 1985); these studies emphasised that individual treatment choices are shaped by the type of illness, the seriousness of the illness and whether treatment is sought for physical symptoms or for the ultimate (social and supernatural) cause of the illness.
The study population expressed that the environment is a key factor for causing illness and emphasised that the environment is a key factor for leading a healthy life. Health is influenced by several factors, and change in climate is one of these determinants. However, the nature and influence of these health determinants are not fully understood (International Arctic Science Committee & Draggan 2012). The study population migrated to the urban area for economic reasons, but they feel nostalgic for their native place and even expressed that they preferred living in their earlier habitat.
In this study, we can see the co-existence of cultural and biomedical concepts regarding health and illness and similar observation is noted among Bhils of Rajasthan, India (Bhasin 2004; Jain & Agrawal 2005). This finding is somewhat in contrast to the earlier studies that were carried out during 1970s and '80s (Erinosa 1978; Oke 1995) in which causes of illness are classified into three categories: supernatural, preternatural or mystical, and natural forces. It appears that in the course of time, certain concepts undergo change while the other cultural concepts continue; the acceptance of biomedical logic may not replace the cultural concept of illness and often both concepts co-exist. Perhaps it is a part of the acculturation process. This continuity and change of cultural concepts regarding health and illness are clearly seen in this community, and has a considerable bearing on the treatment seeking behaviour. While certain illnesses such as measles and jaundice are purely seen with cultural lens and led to the deterring of biomedical treatment; some other illnesses are thought to be treated only by modern medicine. However, often people follow traditional treatment for several illnesses, sometimes biomedical treatment is sought, if the traditional treatment fails, or sometimes both the treatments continue. The perceived causes of diseases have a considerable bearing on determining the choice of treatment, which leads to delays in seeking modern health care.
Conclusions
This study has revealed that the present migrant tribal community has been changing at a certain pace along with their concepts of health and illness. Cultural values show a profound impact on perception of illness among the community. Cultural exchange
with the non-tribal people brings some change in their concepts and views. Thus, this community, with their traditional perception along with modern facilities, is attempting to adapt to the modern world, i.e. urban culture. However, the avoidance or delay in seeking medical care in some cases needs an approach that considers their perception about health and illness. Present-day health education has also been heavily influenced by research of illness perceptions and health-seeking behaviour. We feel that a targeted approach to address the healthcare needs of such migrant communities is necessary in order to make the available public health interventions and medical care available, accessible and acceptable to these vulnerable communities.
References
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Marinker, Marshall. 1997. Personal paper: writing prescriptions is easy. British Medical Journal 314: 747-8. Marshall, Gordon. 1994. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford: New York: Oxford University Press.
Mishra, Suchismita, Deepak K. Behera, Bontha V. Babu & Yadlapalli S. Kusuma. 2012. Encounters with talsa: worship and healing practices for measles among a rural-urban migrant Santal tribal community in Orissa, India. Mankind Quarterly 52(3-4): 311-22. Neumann, Aaron K. & Patricia Lauro. 1982. Ethnomedicine and biomedicine linking. Social Science & Medicine 16(21), 1817-24.
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Povzetek
Ko se skupnost akulturira, se spremenijo tudi koncepti zdravja in bolezni, vseeno pa se skupnost še naprej oklepa svoje domačijske logike, prepričanj, zamišljenih vzrokov, zaznavanja in klasifikacij bolezni ter nadaljnjega upravljanja z njimi. Te koncepte smo proučevali med migrantsko plemensko skupnostjo, ki živi v slumih vzhodnoindijskega mesta Bhubaneswar. Poglobljeni intervjuji so bili opravljeni s posebej izbranimi člani skupnosti, ključnimi informatorji in tradicionalni zdravilci. Z njimi smo govorili o skupnostnem videnju bolezni in njihovih vzrokov ter kako zaradi vpliva migracij na obravnavo različnih bolezni vplivajo kulturni koncepti in pridobljeno sodobno znanje. Za optimalno izrabo zdravstvenih storitev bi bilo potrebno izdelati ustrezne startegije.
KLJUČNE BESEDE: avtohtona medicina, etnografija, migracija, akulturacija, prepričanja, zaznavanje, Indija
CORRSPONDENCE: BONTHA V. BABU, Health Systems Research Division, Indian Council of Medical Research, Ansari Nagar, New Delhi 110 029, India, Email: babubontha@gmail.com.
Prevalence of overweight and obesity among Belgrade youth: A study in a representative sample of 9-14-year-old children and adolescents
Snezana Radisavljevic Janic
University of Belgrade, Faculty of Sport and Physical Education, snezana.radisavljevic@fsfv.bg.ac.rs
Ivana Milanovic
University of Belgrade, Faculty of Sport and Physical Education, ivana.milanovic@fsfv.bg.ac.rs
Milena Zivkovic
University of Belgrade, Faculty of Sport and Physical Education, milena.zivkovic@fsfv.bg.ac.rs
Dragan Mirkov
University of Belgrade, Faculty of Sport and Physical Education, dragan.mirkov@fsfv.bg.ac.rs
Abstract
This study was designed to assess the prevalence of overweight and obesity of urban schoolchildren in Serbia, based on the data collected from the representative sample from schools located in Belgrade, the national capital, as a part of a wider national project. The sample consisted of 11,644 schoolchildren (14% of Belgrade's elementary school population from 9-15 years of age). The body-mass index cut-off points of the International Obesity Task Force were used to identify the prevalence of overweight and obesity. The present study has indicated that the overall prevalence observed in the whole sample was 24.2%, of which 19.2% were overweight, and 5% were obese students. Moreover, a higher prevalence of overweight and obesity has been revealed in boys rather than in girls, in all age groups. These high prevalence trends should be accepted as a warning sign and strategies that promote healthy weight among children and adolescents should be adequately developed and applied.
KEYWORDS: childhood obesity, body mass index, elementary school, sex, gender, Serbia
ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTEBOOKS 19 (3): 71-80. ISSN 1408-032X
© Slovene Anthropological Society 2013
Introduction
Although obesity in childhood is indicated as a complex disorder, the prevalence of overweight and obese children is continually growing globally (Wang & Lobstein, 2006). This has become a worrying public health concern as overweight and obesity in childhood tracks into adulthood (Yang et al. 2007) and is associated with short- and long-term adverse health outcomes (WHO 2004; Steinberger et al. 2009). Moreover, it affects not only the perception of physical competence but is related to a reduced quality of life, mainly due to functional impairments, including deficits in many daily performed motor tasks (Griffiths et al. 2010; Tsiros et al. 2011). In order to support prevention programs, and partly as an emergency signal, identifying individuals (particularly among school populations) who could be classified as obese has become an international trend, and several obesity prevalence studies have been published recently (Ogden, Carroll, Kit, & Flegal, 2012; Wijnhoven et al. 2013; Wang & Lobstein 2006).
No commonly accepted standard has yet emerged (Starc & Strel 2011); although less sensitive than skin-fold thickness and bioelectrical impedance, the body mass index (BMI; weight/height2) is one of the most widely applied ones (Cole & Cachera 2002). BMI also has a number of practical advantages over the alternatives, mainly thanks to the ease of assessment and a large pool of global age and gender-specific reference databases, while the commonly recommended BMI percentile cut-offs (e.g. BMI, R-95th percentile) diagnose obesity reasonably well. Although it has been proven that the international reference data proposed by Cole et al. (Cole et al. 2000), could be satisfactorily used in diagnosing obesity, due to the ethnic, social and demographic differences among countries, the collection and formation of nationally based reference data and cut-off have been strongly encouraged (Cole et al. 2000; Starc & Strel 2011).
Regarding children in Serbia, there have some efforts to assess the prevalence of overweight and obesity among them (Pavlovic et al. 2001; Nedeljkovic 2006), but some of these data were determined based on self-reported height and weight, rather old and incomplete data, with a limited number of the subjects followed. As a part of a wider national project, aimed at tracking students' physical fitness during the elementary school, as a first step in the creation of the national database, based on the data collected from the representative sample from schools located in Belgrade, we have designed a study aimed to assess the prevalence of obesity. We expect the results of the current study to prompt further attempts in creating a gender- and age-specific BMI national database, followed by the creation of national BMI cut-off points, and more precise assessment of prevalence of obesity in Serbian schoolchildren.
Method Sample
The sample consisted of 11,644 schoolchildren (14% of the Belgrade's elementary school population from the third to eighth grade, 9-15 years of age). The detailed structure of the sample is presented in Table 1. The sample was selected by means of proportionate stratified random sampling taking into account the location and the number of students
by age and gender in each school. Schools were randomly selected within each part of the city until the established number of subjects by each part was attained. The selected schools agreed to participate in the study.
Table I : Sample structure by age and gender
School grade/age	Boys	Girls	Total
3 (9-10 years)	951	1Q16	196l
4 (10-11 years)	1162	1Q4S	22Q5
5 (11-12 years)	1Q54	92B	19B2
6 (12-13 years)	9S5	BB6	1B21
7 (13-14 years)	B9B	B94	1l92
8 (14-15 years)	1QQ6	Bl1	18ll
Total	6006	5638	11644
All measurements in the current research were performed in accordance with ethical standards of the American Psychological Association (American Psychological Association, 2007) and were approved by the institutional review board of the Faculty of Sport and Physical Education, University of Belgrade, Serbia.
Measurement of body mass and its classification
Subjects were barefoot in their shorts and T-shirts. Height was measured with Seca stadiometers to the nearest 0.1 cm and weight with pre-calibrated portable weighting scales Seca (Seca Instruments Ltd., Hamburg, Germany) to the nearest 0.1 kg. The body mass index (BMI) was calculated as body mass weight/height2 (kg/m2). The international age- and gender-specific child BMI cut-off points for children developed by the Childhood Obesity Working Group of the International Obesity Task Force were used to define subjects as normal-weight, overweight or obese (Cole et al. 2000). These cut-off points were derived in a large international sample using regression techniques by passing a line through the health-related adult cut-off points at the age of 18. Children with BMI values that corresponded to an adult BMI under 25 were classified as normal-weight, those whose BMI corresponded to an adult BMI between 25 and 30 were considered as overweight, and children with a BMI corresponding to an adult BMI above 30 were categorized as obese. The data were collected in 2011. Participants were evaluated during school physical education classes by physical education teachers specially trained for this type of data collection. Consent was solicited from the participating school boards, and student participation was voluntary.
Statistical analysis
To assess potential gender- and age-specific differences in the prevalence of obesity distribution, Chi square was calculated. To explore trends in overweight and obese boys and girls across the grades (Change in Overweight and Obesity rate with grade for boys
and girls) simple linear regression analysis was performed separately for boys and girls; thereafter, the obtained slopes of the regression lines were compared (level of significance: p<0.05). The level of statistical significance was set to p<0.05. Data were analysed using SPSS 17.0 software (SPSS Inc. Chicago, IL, U.S.).
Results
The prevalence of overweight (OW), obesity (OB), and overweight and obesity (OW+OB) with respect to gender and grade are presented in Table 2. The overall prevalence, observed in the whole sample was 24.2%, out of which 19.2% were overweight, and 5% were obese students (Table 2).
Table 2: The prevalence of overweight and obesity by school grade and gender
Grade		Boys			Girls			Total	
	N	OW	OB	N	OW	OB	N	OW	OB
3	73.2%	20.2%	6.6%	78.1%	17.6%	4.3%	75.7%	18.9%	5.4%
4	70.5%	23.6%	5.9%	76.7%	17.8%	5.5%	73.4%	20.9%	5.7%
5	71.3%	22.7%	6.1%	76.1%	19.9%	4.0%	73.5%	21.4%	5.1%
6	72.5%	20.9%	6.6%	80.7%	16.7%	2.6%	76.5%	18.8%	4.7%
7	75.7%	19.8%	4.5%	82.0%	15.4%	2.6%	78.9%	17.6%	3.5%
8	76.4%	18.1%	5.5%	79.8%	15.5%	4.7%	78.0%	16.9%	5.1%
Total	73.1%	21.0%	5.9%	78.8%	17.2%	4.0%	75.9%	19.2%	5.0%
The overall prevalence (OW and OB), observed in the whole sample according to gender, was 26.9% in boys, and 21.2% in girls. Observed in all age groups, the overall prevalence of overweight body mass and obesity was higher in boys compared to girls (Table 2).
Although the highest prevalence of overweight was found in the 4th and 5th grades, the distribution across the grades was not statistically significant (p > 0.05). The prevalence of obesity was equally distributed across the grades, while the distribution of obesity and overweight was significantly higher (p<0.01) in the 4th and 5th grades than in others.
When the prevalence of obesity and overweight was compared within boys across the grades, the highest prevalence of overweight was recorded in the fourth grade (23.6%), while the highest obesity prevalence was recorded in the third and sixth grade (6.6%), although these differences in distribution were not statistically significant (p>0.05). Taken together, the highest overweight and obesity rates were recorded among boys in the third, fourth and sixth grades (p<0.05). Among girls, the highest prevalence of overweight was recorded in the fifth grade (19.9%), the highest obesity prevalence was recorded in the fourth grade (5.5%), while the highest levels of overweight and obesity among girls were recorded in the fourth and fifth grades (p<0.05).
Both regression lines are depicted on Figure 1. The slopes of both trend lines were negative (-0.0095 for boys and -0.0083 for girls) indicating exceptionally small decreases (negative trend) in both genders without statistically significant inter-gender differences (p<0.05).
35% i 30% -
£ 25% -
I 20% -
0
1	15% ■
re
O 10% -5% -0% -
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
GRADE
Figure 1: Regression lines (change in overweight and obesity rate with grade
for boys and girls)
Discussion
This is the first report documenting the prevalence of overweight and obesity in a representative sample of Belgrade children and adolescents, aged 9 to 14. The overall prevalence observed in the whole sample was 24.2%, of which 19.2% were overweight, and 5% were obese pupils. Looking at the prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity based on measured heights and weights from nationally representative survey data in 21 European countries during the 1990s, Lobstain and Frelut (2003) noted a tendency for a high prevalence of overweight among children from the south-western European countries, and, in contrast, generally lower levels of overweight were found among children in the countries of central and eastern Europe. The authors argued that lower levels of overweight were found among children in the countries of central and eastern Europe whose economies had suffered varying degrees of recession during the period of economic and political transition in the 1990s. According to these data, Serbia (former Yugoslavia) had an obesity and overweight prevalence of 17% in that period and belonged to the group of countries with a low prevalence. However, this data were collected over 10 years ago and, therefore, could not represent the current state.
This study is a part of the wider national project, aimed at following up students' physical fitness across the elementary school time and is the first step in the creation of a national database of which an essential part is to detect the current prevalence overweight and obesity in Serbia. The data collected from the representative sample from schools located in Belgrade in 2011 revealed that the prevalence is 24.2%, indicating an increase
A Soys O G'lS	- — I ricij- IG . J
Boys:
V = -0,0095x +0,3196 R1 =0,S545
Girls
y = -D,0083x + D,Z57 R2 = 0,4493
of 6% in prevalence when compared with results obtained 12 years previously. This gives an entirely new picture of the trend of increasing prevalence in Belgrade, and presumably in Serbia as well, since Belgrade is a city with approximately two million citizens and a demographic that resembles that of Serbia as a whole. Therefore, it can be expected that a similar trend will be obtained in the Serbian representative sample (national data collection is in progress).
Regarding the revealed trend that highlights the change in overweight and obesity within boys and girls across the grades, it should be noted that these small decreases in the prevalence rate with grade, although significant, should be taken with caution, while the data presented are obtained in a cross-sectional study, not allowing the drawing of any conclusions about the developmental-related changes, which should be further investigated through the continuous follow-up of the subjects across the grades.
In the ongoing transition period in Serbia, although the economic crisis has not produced shortages and insufficient food, due to reduced financial income, a large number of families have been and still are forced to consume poor quality food. In the diets of both adults and the young, the prevailing food is rich in carbohydrates (bread, biscuits, pasta, etc.), as well as foods with high percentages of fat (pork, burgers, kebabs, etc.). In addition to material deprivation, which is probably one of the reasons for the unhealthy diet that prevails among a large number of children and young people in Belgrade, we assume that the lack of information in a large number of parents concerning a healthy diet could be another factor that has played a part in the increasing prevalence of obesity in children and the young Furthermore, the nutrition of students while they are in school, in the absence of organized and controlled school canteens, is rich in fast food (hamburgers, pizza, snacks, sweets, soft drinks, etc.), which directly results in the increase of obesity in students (Ministarstvo zdravlja RS 2007). This could be supported with results of authors (French et al. 2001; Hills, Andersen & Byrne 2011) who founded that a change in dietary patterns in recent decades, including an increased consumption of soft drinks, candies and junk food, has been implicated in the increase in childhood and adolescent obesity. In addition, in recent decades physical activity patterns in adolescents have changed as a result of increase in time spent watching television and playing computer games (French at al. 2001; Robinson & Godbey 1997). Demographic trends have shown that children and adults in the countries in transition, Serbia included, have already adopted the Western model of urban lifestyle, i.e. a sedentary lifestyle and food rich in fats, meat products and snacks. The trend of reduced physical activity with the age of children in highly developed countries (Caspersen, Pereira & Curran 2000; Trost et al. 2002; Telama & Yang 2000) is also present in Serbia (Radisavljevic et al. 2012), and, therefore, the young spend more and more time watching television, sitting in front of a PC, playing computer games and joining various virtual social networks. One of the interesting results of our research regarding the gender of the students indicated that a higher prevalence of overweight students is observed in boys than in girls in all age groups. This finding is in line with those obtained in Portugal (Sardinha et al. 2010), Slovenia (Kovač et al. 2012), and Finland (Vuorela et al. 2011) who recorded the similar trend.
Another important finding of the current study revealed that distribution of obesity and overweight was significantly higher (p<0.01) in the 4th and 5th grades than in other grades. The obtained results indicate the potential problem in daily habits in the youngest children in Belgrade, but simultaneously imply that it could be greater in the coming years. The comparison of current findings with those related to childhood obesity reported a decade ago (Lobstain & Frelut, 2003) and registered trends in Slovenia (Leskošek, Strel & Kovač 2010; Kovač, Jurak, Zaletel Kragelj & Leskošek 2013), which, similar to Serbia, has underwent enormous socio-political and economic changes in the last 20 years, indicate alarming forecast. For example, Kovač et al. (2013) found that in every year from 1991 to 2011 the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the capital city of Slovenia increased by 1.7%. Therefore, the prevention of obesity in childhood and effective treatment of overweight children should be essential in Serbia. Prevention may be achieved through a variety of interventions targeting the creation of positive environments, physical activity, and diet. Children are often considered the priority population for intervention strategies, considering that obesity in childhood often follows into adulthood (Starc & Strel 2011; Whitaker, Wright, Pepe, Seidel & Dietz 1997), which further supports the importance of preventing childhood obesity with interventions for children.
These strategies could be initiated at home and in preschool institutions, schools or after-school care services as a natural setting aimed to influence the dietary habits, as well as physical activity manners of preschool and schoolchildren. The successful school-based interventions from countries with similar trends of childhood obesity, educational systems and cultural roots (i.e. Jurak, Kovač & Strel 2012; Starc & Strel 2012) could be implemented.
The potential limits of our study could be the cross-sectional nature of the study, not allowing for drawing any conclusion about the developmental-related changes. In addition, the sample consists of children living in the national capital, which not only has the highest income per capita but also the greatest variety of possibilities for physical activities in comparison to other parts of the country. Nevertheless, due to the careful stratification and relatively large number of subjects in comparison to similar studies (Sardinha et al. 2011; Pavlovic et al. 2001; Nedeljkovic 2006), we believe that our study provides a valid set of data, allowing the comparison of our findings with those of previous studies.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this study was designed to assess the prevalence of obesity of urban schoolchildren in Serbia based on the data collected from the representative sample from schools located in Belgrade, the capital city of Serbia, as a part of a wider national project. The present study has indicated that the overall prevalence observed in the whole sample was 24.2%, of which 19.2% were overweight, and 5% were obese students. Moreover, a higher prevalence of overweight and obesity has been revealed in boys rather than in girls, in all age groups. The highest prevalence of obesity in the youngest age group
of students implies that prevention of obesity in childhood and effective treatment of overweight children should be essential in Serbia. These high prevalence trends should be accepted as a warning sign, and strategies that promote healthy weight among children and adolescents should be adequately developed and applied. However, further research should be performed, including other relevant factors (healthy diet, level of physical activity), within the monitoring of the prevalence of obesity in children in Serbia in order to obtain a more complex picture of this problem and support the development of more efficient strategies for facing with this obviously serious problem.
Acknowledgements
This paper is the result of the projects 'Improving the quality and accessibility of education in modernization processes in Serbia' No 47008 (2011-2014) and 'The effects of physical activity application to locomotor, metabolic, psychosocial and educational status with the population of the Republic of Serbia' No III47015 (2011-2014) financially supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Serbia. The study was also supported in part by a grant from the Serbian Research Council (No 175037 and No 175012).
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Povzetek
Študijaje bila zasnovana, da bi ugotovili prevalenco prekomerne prehranjenosti in debelosti učencev iz urbanega okolja Srbije. Podatki so bili zbrani na reprezentativnem vzorcu učencev iz šol v prestolnici kot del nacionalne študije. V vzorec je bilo vključenih 11.644 učencev (14% populacije učencev prestolnice v starosti med 9 in 15 let). Iz dobljenih podatkov smo izračunali indekse telesne mase, za določitev prekomerne prehranjenosti in debelosti pa smo uporabili merila International Obesity Task Force. Rezultati kažejo, daje skupna prevalenca v celotnem vzorcu 24,2%, od tega je 19,2% učencev prekomerno prehranjenih in 5% debelih. Med fanti je večja prevalenca prekomerno prehranjenih in debelih v vseh starostnih skupinah. Visok trend prevalence je treba prepoznati kot opozorilo. Potrebno je razviti in udejanjiti ustrezne strategije za promocijo zdrave telesne teže med otroci in adolescenti.
KLJUČNE BESEDE: debelost pri otrocih, indeks telesne mase, osnovna šola, spol, Srbija
CORRESPONDENCE: SNEŽANA RADISAVLJEVIC JANIC, University of Belgrade, Faculty of Sport and Physical Education, Blagoja Parovica, 156, 11030 Belgrade, Serbia. E-mail: snezana.radisavljevic@fsfv.bg.ac.rs.
The power of place: Spatio-temporality of a Melanesian religious movement
Borut Telban
Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, borut.telban@zrc-sazu.si
Abstract
Over the years, several different renewal movements within Christianity have had a significant impact on Melanesian societies and cultures. In people's aspirations for total transformation, however, there has often appeared one insurmountable obstacle: a firm bond between being and place. The Ambonwari people of the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea have faced the same problem since the Catholic charismatic movement reached the village in December 1994. Their cosmology and social organization have always been inseparable from their paths (journeys, marriages, exchanges, adoptions) and places (places of mythological ancestors, old and new villages, places of other groups, places for processing sago, fishing places, taboo places, camps), and their historicity was primarily perceived and defined in terms of place. The adherents of the Catholic charismatic movement attempt to abolish their emplaced past, transcend their territorial boundaries, and simultaneously modify their places. Because Ambonwari cosmology dealt with multiple spatio-temporalities, however, Catholic charismatic leaders find it difficult to undermine this diversity. It is this multiplicity of emplaced historicities that troubles them most and not simply time per se.
KEYWORDS: temporality, space and time, Catholic charismatic movement, religion, Papua New Guinea
Introduction
Recent decades have seen a rapid spread of Pentecostal and charismatic movements throughout the world, including Melanesia (Csordas 2007; Meyer 2004; Robbins 2003; 2004b). What these movements share is a drastic rejection of the past, a sharp break with collective ancestral practices, and a committed refusal to remember anything that could bring the unwanted ways of life back into the present. Dismissal of the past is combined with euphoria of the present, enchanted by the word of God and charismata (e.g. spirit possession, speaking in tongues, healing powers, and prophecy) delivered by the Holy Spirit. There is no doubt that this movement is in its origin a religious movement - although it comes together with the process of globalisation - and that it often attracts groups of people to whom religion is not clearly separated from, for example, politics
ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTEBOOKS 19 (3): 81-100. ISSN 1408-032X
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or the economy. Cosmology, which is situated in both places and bodies, pertains to all domains of people's lives including their social organization, kin relationships, subsistence practices, and so on, and not only to a particular domain that we call "religion". To focus on cosmology as if it were confined to a religious realm would be to misinterpret people's existence and to impose an analytical apparatus foreign to their life-world. A radical dichotomy between people's spiritual and material concerns, as well as between sacred and profane aspects of their lives more generally, moves us away from their own understanding of the cosmos as a whole. Rather, as Strathern and Stewart (2009: 12) have recently reaffirmed, the two realms are intertwined as one.
A number of anthropologists have emphasized the above-mentioned cosmological orientation of Melanesian societies. Thus, for example, writing on cargo phenomena in the southern Madang District, Peter Lawrence stated that religion was not 'a separate cultural component' (although he made it such for analytical purposes) and that cosmos was conceived as an exclusively unified physical realm (1967: 12, 31). Lawrence immediately dismissed any 'concept of the supernatural: a realm of existence not only apart from but also on a higher plane than the physical world' (ibid.). Men cooperated with gods and spirits, the latter living within the earth (in rocks, trees, and river pools near human settlements) and not somewhere above in the sky. The cosmos, even if not always visible, was a finite realm and people's transcendental spiritual world was confined to their places. Spirits of the recently dead were perceived as consociates and people's postmortem existence was situated in the time and the place of the living. Cosmic time had no chronological meaning; distant forbearers were forgotten, socio-economic order was continually reconstructed and believed to be the same as the one of their ancestors. This, of course, also meant that the past continued to be lived in the present and the then of the ancestors often meant here of the living.
Such a perspective has been confirmed also by other anthropologists working in Melanesia. Among the Kwaio of the Solomon Islands, as Keesing (1982: 50, 56) argued, religion is neither a special domain of people's cultural life nor it is separated from social organization, economy, traditional law and politics; the ancestors are those who in all domains of people's engagement are the most powerful and have the leading role. In a similar vein historian of religions Jonathan Z. Smith wrote: ''Religion' is not a native category... It is a category imposed from the outside on some aspect of native culture. It is... colonialists, who are solely responsible for the content of the term' (2004: 179). Recently Godelier re-emphasized this point when he wrote that separation between the political and the religious domains of human life is of a recent invention and does not hold for many societies around the world (2009: 146), including, one might add, those founded on Islamic faith.
A Catholic charismatic movement cannot therefore separate a religious domain from the political and economic ones in order to address only religious issues. It deals with all domains of people's lives simultaneously. But then, conversely and from the people's perspective, the Catholic charismatic movement is also perceived and dealt with in terms of all domains of people's lives. It is also because of these internal reasons, I would say, that the spread of Pentecostal and charismatic movements (also due to their relative standardisation and uniformity around the world) is tightly interwoven with the
spread of technological progression, media, world market economy and, in the case of Melanesian religious movements, with the world of "white people" and their wealth and power generally.1 As mentioned earlier, there is no strict dichotomy between spiritual and material expectations of people.
The internal institutional structure of orthodox Christianity, the institution of the Church in particular, dwells on a binary opposition between a "higher" spiritual domain pertaining to the priesthood, to Heaven and to God and the "lower" place-bound issues of the everyday life of humans, clearly exhibited in its top-down hierarchy. I am not saying that Christianity does not aim at its realisation in concrete places on earth.2 What I do want to emphasise is that its authoritarian and universalizing force comes from above, from God, Heaven, the Holy See in Vatican, the Pope, bishops, and so on.
The Catholic charismatic movement likewise articulates this distinction between higher and lower spiritual domains. However, the two levels become connected not only through the life and deeds of Jesus (the Christian year and calendar transpose spatial sequence onto a temporal one) but mainly through the Holy Spirit embodied in individual believers.3 Robin, the first Catholic charismatic leader in Ambonwari, said this about the main difference between orthodox Catholicism and the charismatic one:
Church is one! The difference between the two is that all Church leaders look at the book while charismatic followers use only their heads. You pray and pray and thoughts will come. I will go so and so. This will happen. Even if I go and see the sick I do not look into the book. I just pray and pray. The talk will come, as if a computer has sent it. Computer will bring all the talk into your little machine (i.e. head).
Robin also distrusts the representatives of the Catholic Church and cherishes the leader of the Sepik charismatic movement:
They (church representatives) only speak on the top (superficial talk,), they just act-talk (pretend). They talk only about big things, not really going into them. On the other hand Ken Charles (charismatic leader from Kanduanam village on the Sepik River) goes inside (deep).
1	I use "white people" to denote all light skin people regardless of their country of origin, and (in particular contexts) also the spirits of the dead.
2	In the fourth century when Christians came to Palestine 'a system was formulated that could be replicated away from the place... The sequence of time, the story, the festal calendar, have allowed a supersession of place' (Smith 1987: 94). Ritualized structures oftemporality became the means of overcoming topography enabling the invention of the Christian year which could be exported (ibid.: 94—95, 114—115). Also in the fourth century, the Roman Catholic Church in accord with its traditional anti-millennialism rejected the vision of a Kingdom of God on earth, making it otherworldly, eternal, and unrelated to the secular world (Casanova 2001: 420-1). God was not emplaced in the earth as, for example, the bush spirits are, but rather lingered in a transcendental mode of existence.
3	In the 1960s, the traditional Catholic position was altered by inner-worldly reorientation (spatial dimension. e.g. active participation in the transformation of the world), by acceptance of the principle of historicity (temporal dimension, e.g. God's plans of salvation in and through history), and by embracing the modern secular world (Casanova 2001: 420). It was at that time, i.e. in 1967, that charismatic Catholicism also began rapidly to spread over the earth.
Thus, the Catholic charismatic movement is first of all a movement of God exchanging words and thoughts with the people through the medium of the Holy Spirit. This is achieved through the individual body which actually becomes displaced by the high frequency and repetitious nature of ecstatic séances: trance, speaking in tongues, prayers, and healing ceremonies.
Traditional cosmology, in contrast, is an ongoing circulation of emplaced relationships and practices with which the frequent and repetitious myths, legends, songs, chants, and other verbal expressions are neatly interwoven. Myth, for example, is thus perceived as a part of lived experience in the emplaced present and not just an isolated story form the past (see, for example, Young 1983). In this way, it deals with people's experiences embedded in their named places and numerous movements, which in Ambonwari are called konggong 'paths': migrations, marriages, exchanges. These paths relate their place to other places and other beings. The cosmos, as a structured but flexible inter-subjective life-world, provides an emplaced framework for dealing with both stability and change of these places. The cosmos is neither spatially homogeneous nor temporally static, otherwise it could not incorporate new groups, new relationships, and new ideas. Both stability and change depend on the paths that people decide to take: memorialisation and repetition of old paths secures durability and stability of a place; establishment of new paths provides a place with novelty and change. People's memory also greatly depends upon this cosmic system of places and movements-paths (migrations, marriages, adoptions, exchanges) from and to these places. It is this place-bound but path-opened character of Ambonwari (and I would suggest typically Melanesian) life-world that came under the impact of a radical religious transformative force, which is the main subject of my article.
Being of the place
Over the past two decades, the philosophers Edward Casey (1998, 2009 [1993]) and Jeff Malpas (1999, 2008) and the anthropologist Tim Ingold (2000) have emphasised the importance of a phenomenological perspective on the place-bound existence of human beings.4 In his introduction to the second edition of his Getting Back into Place: Towards a Renewed Understanding of the Place World, Casey (2009) writes about the intimate connection, the interdependent relationship, the coevalness between place and region. While in the first edition, published in 1993, place seemed to be over-autonomous, Casey now incorporates places in the region and vice versa. What Casey calls region, Ingold calls landscape, and argues against both a 'sterile opposition between the naturalistic view of the landscape as a neutral, external backdrop to human activities, and the culturalistic view that every landscape is a particular cognitive or symbolic ordering of space' (2000: 188). For Ingold, the landscape is an inseparable part of every being, a testimony to the
4 All three scholars have written their works also as a response to the present day technological age characterised by a systematic elimination of place, global homelessness, and the loss of "nearness". Their works can be compared with similar works in the field of ecophenomenology.
lives of past generations, and 'the world as it is known to those who dwell therein, who inhabit its places and journey along the paths connecting them' (2000: 193).5
Casey defends the phenomenological approach to place which, regardless of its 'prejudicial commitments and ethnocentric stances,' gives priority to the actual lived experience of people and to both an anthropologist in the field and the people he or she studies (2009: 320). Seeing perception as a primary domain of human existence (as did both Husserl and Merleau-Ponty), Casey insists that only by being at a particular place is one able to perceive it. In other words, knowledge of place is neither prior nor secondary to perception but is fully experiential and already integrated in perception itself (Casey 2009: 321). It is for this reason that Casey is critical of the otherwise brilliant ethnographies of Weiner (1991) and Myers (1986), objecting that they give priority to space as a neutral pre-given medium, which is then 'filled up' with history and culture, instead of to place which is perceived, sensed and experienced: people are not simply in places but are of them; they are place-bound (Casey 2009: 320-2). Casey's argument, however, has to be approached cautiously. On one hand, he attributes the merging of nature and culture to 'old ways of living characteristic of many aboriginal societies' (Casey 2009: xxxiv), and his ethnocentric perspective which opposes 'European civilization' to 'pre-civilized life' evokes nostalgia for primordial unity. On the other, as Myers (2000: 78, 104) wrote in his reply to his criticism, Casey totally ignores socio-political mediation, i.e. the fact that practices of place-making and experiences of place are socially and politically organized.
Many ethnographers have provided detailed studies regarding the importance of places in peoples' cultures. When, for example, Howard Morphy writes about time and landscape in Aboriginal Australia he says: 'Place has precedence over time in Yolngu ontogeny. Time was created through the transformation of ancestral beings into place, the place being for ever the mnemonic of the event. They 'sat down' and, however briefly they stayed, they became part of the place for ever. In Yolngu terms they turned into the place' (Morphy 1995: 188). The sequencing in time could to some extent only become recognisable in those cases when events occurred in different places and not in different times. And even then synchronicity takes over, transforming temporality into features of the landscape. Yolngu languages also give precedence to spatial vocabulary when speaking about distance in time (ibid.). Naming system, kinship, and ritual are all closely connected to place. Changes, being a consequence of people's action, transform the present as well as the past and construct new divisions of the landscape. In short, the past gets adjusted to the present and so does the landscape, which is a kind of mediator between present experience and the experience of the ancestors (ibid.: 205).
Looking at Keith Basso's well-known text Wisdom Sits in Places (1996), we see that the Apache construction of place is also a form of cultural activity of sensing of place that includes their tribal past, wisdom, and morality. Location of past events in time can be achieved only in a vague way; 'what matters most to Apaches is where events occurred, not when, and what they serve to reveal about the development and
5 In the present article, I use the terms region and landscape interchangeably.
character of Apache social life. In light of these priorities, temporal considerations, though certainly not irrelevant, are accorded secondary importance' (ibid.: 31). Apache do not see themselves as being simply inhabitants of their landscape but they are also inhabited by it; 'selfhood and placehood are completely intertwined' (ibid.: 146). Place-names, with their rich descriptive imagery, are not only elicitors of history but are also witnesses of changes in the landscape and society at large. Being 'an elemental existential fact' and 'inseparable from the ideas that inform it,' sense of place is 'stoutly resistant to change' (ibid.: 144, 148).
What we can immediately detect from these two separate accounts, one from Aboriginal Australia and the other from indigenous America, is that time is secondary to place in both contexts. Place gathers the past by encompassing the events that happened there and which make it not only what but how it is; individual and social memory is simultaneously constituted through a relationship between people and places. This does not mean that places are fixed and unchangeable; on the contrary, places are those that witness and incorporate change. Changes in society and culture are simultaneously changes in the landscape and vice versa. However, as these two different cultural contexts confirm, this bond between being and place makes both the people and the places more powerful and at the same time more resistant to change. Moreover, these places do not oppose change in some passive manner but - in the process of their own transformation -they reciprocally and in a very active way influence the change itself. Even a significant technologically induced change of society (e.g. the recent boom of mobile telephony in Papua New Guinea) (Telban & Vavrova, forthcoming) involves place-based strategies that shape the changes in a specific place-bound way. The exchange paths, for example, which lead to and from different places, open up possibilities for transformation of both people and places.
In a more recent study conducted among the Tlingit of northern Southeast Alaska, Thomas Thornton (2008: 8) focuses on place-making processes and identifies four key cultural structures that are central in people's relationship to and appropriation of place: emplaced social organization, language that shapes perception of places, material (subsistence) production informing how places are used, and ceremonial life that fosters spiritual ties to places. Regardless of many changes in all four cultural domains, during the post-contact era since 1800 in particular, the Tlingit continue to bind themselves and their culture to the places they inhabit. Their place-names evoke the past and provide continuous relationship between a particular group and the land that sustains them. Rather than places being named after people, a common feature of the Euro-American place-naming system where an individual is said to be the basic social unit, people are named after places. The land thus becomes a mnemonic device of and for different generations, events and activities, and it is through the land that 'the underlying order of the cosmos... is revealed' (Thornton 2008: 106).
Through the naming of a place, the philosopher Jeff Malpas (2008: 266) writes, the place becomes a place; it becomes situated in relation to other places; it becomes a place that gathers and is itself gathered. It is through the naming practice generally, 'through the way the word calls up a thing, and the place with it, that language is also
a happening of place and place a happening of language' (ibid.).6 The critique of the present day technological ordering of the world, the systematic elimination of places, and the shrinking sensory experience of human beings when one 'no longer 'sees' the sky or 'touches the earth', is taken up by Malpas (2008: 297) in the second part of his book, in which he argues for the centrality of place in the later work of Martin Heidegger. The unity of places in space (we could call also this unity a place or a region or even a cosmos) is provided by movements between them, by passages and paths that connect them. These paths between places also enable these places to open up.
Priority given to an abstract space (which lacks the particularities of a living place), associated especially with the beginnings of technological advancement, is illustrative of how easy it is to misinterpret a life world of other people, who through their doings and sayings not only affirm the bond between people and place but continuously re-confirm it through their many institutions. Casey writes about the modern era and how time has assumed predominant position in physics, philosophy and soon in people's daily lives too: 'The subordination of place to space culminates in the seventeenth century; the subordination of space to time continues during the next two-and-a-half centuries' (2009: 8). In the present-day world, one might say, global time in its linear and progressive form to which values became attached, began to dominate both place and space. Although people live different temporalities, speed and the continuous drive for novelty have come to characterize many domains of people's lives.7 While the power of the technological age and its role in de-territorialisation is emphasized by all earlier mentioned scholars, they were not concerned with the extreme force of the new religious movements, which spread over the world to a large extent simultaneously with technological globalisation. However, before I venture into the complex relationship between Melanesian cosmos and Christian universe and the changes brought to the former by the Catholic charismatic movement let me present some characteristics of the Ambonwaris' emplaced existence.
Ambonwari
A total of 784 Karawari-speaking people lived in 2011 in Ambonwari village in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. Upon my arrival to the village in September 1990, the population was smaller: 422 villagers represented a typical Sepik society with a vast range of rituals and other customary practices. Although there was then one main men's
6	Connerton (2009: 10) distinguishes between two different place-related ways of remembering: the memorial and the locus. The examples of the memorial are the place-name and the pilgrimage; the examples of the locus are the house and the street. Thus, in the case of Ambonwari, place-names and the paths of the ancestors could be said to 'summon up immense range of associations, about history, about events, about persons, about social activities: and historical narratives are given precision when they are organized spatially, when temporal order is given shape as a sequence of localities associated with events' (2009: 13). Place-names cover the past, which is to some extent available only to the knowledgeable few who 'exercise power over land and over others: the testimony remains when the power has gone' (Connerton 2009: 10).
7	I am not implying that in modernity being is only temporal and in all other contexts being is only placial. What I am saying is that in modernity temporalities and spatialities of different domains of people's lives have been highly homogenized: time in terms of a priority given to constant progress and change, and place in terms of globalizing uniformity given to public sites and roads.
house owned by the members of Crocodile-1 Clan, who claimed precedence due to the prior arrival of their mythological ancestor to the region, the members of all other clans remembered the journeys of their own ancestors (see Telban 1998). Each clan's ancestor (and his group) had his own path of arrival and his men's house. If their men's house was not actually standing the clan members at least knew its name, which was almost as good as the physical object itself. What connected different clans of the village was not their common place of origin but a variety of ancestral paths that led from different directions and converged in what became Ambonwari village. While the village was relocated several times, the paths of the ancestors remained fixed and frozen. Through the entire history of subsequent paths (travels, marriages, exchanges, adoptions), the Ambonwari created a dense web of past and present relationships between village clans, lineages and individuals and the places they occupied. These past relationships could be detected not only through the many institutions (and their actual or imaginary realizations in different periods) but also through the distribution and use of land inhabited and controlled by the spirit-crocodiles (Telban & Vavrova 2010). Every spirit-crocodile and the place he occupies has his "father"; place and its spirit-crocodile have the same name and both are owned by a particular clan, a particular lineage within the clan, and a particular individual within the lineage, called "father of the place". Moreover, such a person, and actually every member of his lineage and clan, including external classificatory members, is identified by this spirit-crocodile and the place. This becomes especially apparent in a ritual context, when people, places and spirit-crocodiles merge together (Telban 2008). Paths taken between lineages and between clans (e.g. in marriage or exchange) or between villagers and outsiders are at the same time perceived as movements of their spirit-crocodiles, as movements between and of the places.
The present-day Ambonwari village was formed and continually recreated as a place with a centripetalforce impersonated by the spirit-crocodile Ibrismari who represented the ground on which the village is erected. I often heard people say that whenever they go to the town of Wewak or to some other faraway place this spirit-crocodile expands into a snake and follows them, helps them if they are in trouble, punishes them in the case of their misbehaviour, and ultimately pulls them back to the village. The power of the place, and its role in supervision of social and moral issues, was therefore nicely expressed through the doings of the spirit-crocodile. When some individuals or groups wanted to separate from the enclosure of the village (e.g. when a man built a house on the other side of the Ibris Creek or when the members of a particular clan built their men's house at the place where their ancestors had lived before joining Ambonwari) they were stricken by sickness and death until they returned to the place controlled and protected by Ibrismari. This imunggan saki 'bush-spirit of the village' was so powerful that it had to be kept under control, not only by initiation ritual but also by other institutions, such as for instance, the institution of three "mothers of the village" (wives of the descendants of three brothers who were first to arrive to the region), whose main obligation was to sit firmly in their houses and "press" the spirit-crocodile down beneath the surface. The usual work that women do was prohibited for them (Telban 1998). While some places in their region were occupied by supportive spirit-crocodiles and used for hunting and gathering, other places, being inhabited by vicious and destructive spirit-crocodiles, became taboo places and had to be avoided. Then the
Ambonwari began to take longer paths to previously unknown places while at the same time the outside world was forming new paths coming closer to their place.
Over the previous 80 years, the Ambonwari went through several turbulent periods that influenced and shaped their attitudes towards their life-world, towards their places and towards their time. Let me mention the most significant ones. In the 1930s, a small number of men were recruited to work on copra plantations in Rabaul. In the 1950s, the village was baptized but the external representatives of Roman Catholic Church did not remain in the village. The impact, however, was considerable as it was for the first time in their history that they radically rejected their custom and temporarily dumped their spirits and associated rituals.8 In the 1970s, when six years of elementary education was introduced into the vicinity, the men's houses were rebuilt and initiation rituals brought back to the village. Although the church was built and re-built, the Roman Catholic village leaders were not in harsh contention with the majority of customary practices.
During my initial fieldwork in Ambonwari between 1990 and 1992, the Sunday mass was held in a private house and was attended mainly by a small number of women and children. It was December 1994, when a Catholic charismatic movement reached the village from its centre in Kanduanam village on the Sepik River. From then on, Ambonwari began to revise their relationships with their forest spirits and spirits of the dead on a much more fundamental level and have gradually abandoned all those practices that provided the spirits with their power (Telban 2008, 2009; Telban & Vavrova 2010). Everything was done in order to dethrone the spirit-crocodiles from their domineering positions. Ambonwari people simultaneously began to modify their attitudes towards their places. They stopped organizing male initiation rituals. The last one took place during the first months of 1994. After the year 2000, the Ambonwari abandoned divination and healing rituals, in which spirit-crocodiles and spirits of the dead played the innermost role (Telban 1997, 2001). Other institutionalised practices such as the observations of prohibitions related to three mothers of the village and of those related to taboo places were between 2001 and 2008 also abandoned (Telban & Vavrova 2010). However, the bush spirits, as in other Melanesian societies that have been affected by Pentecostal or Catholic charismatic movements, have not vanished. They remain in their places as an ongoing and persistent obstacle in people's aspirations for a thorough transformation of their place-bound cosmology.
8 During the following years several new ceremonies were introduced. In the 1960s, when the men worked on the plantations in Bogia in Madang Province, they returned to the village with a new dancing and singing ceremony called singel wo (single war) in Tok Pisin. From then on, the end of a mourning period or a celebration of a new year began to be marked by this kind of dancing around a decorated pole and singing only in Tok Pisin. Aymalo dancing and singing around a pole with a huge carved fish was purchased in 1990s from Moim on the Lower Sepik River. Aymalo, a well-known show all around the East Sepik Province at least since the World World I (Lipset 2009: 74 e.n.1), replaced kambun siria — singing and dancing of a shield, which was previously typical for the opening of a new men's house and occasionally for conclusion of a mourning period. At about the same time, Ambonwari bought in Madang for 50 Kina another singing and dancing ceremony called mandayp.
I present these examples in order to show that the paths and relationships that Ambonwari created over time enabled them to bring new ceremonies to the village. They represented a significant change in the ritual life of the village.
Ambonwari people understand their cosmology, social organisation and all their institutions as being based on the intimate bond between people and places. Their cosmo-ontological imagery, which connects spirits, places and people, was therefore the first to come under attack during the revival activities of Ambonwari charismatics. In the next sections, I would like to examine the collision between these different orientations in the following ways:
First, in order to show how cosmology represents an obstacle for a total change, I will look at the differences between Melanesian cosmos and Christian universe. I would like to show that the Biblical concept of Heaven has a particular connotation for Ambonwari. To put it bluntly, for Ambonwari Heaven is closely connected to white people's places and their ways of life. Ambonwari do not look only for transcendental benefits of charismatic renewal but equally for the visible, tangible and emplaced ones. In fact, this is not too far from traditional cosmology in which transcendence and immanence are indistinguishable.
Second, by looking at the concepts of above and below I will argue that small-scale societies such as the Ambonwari, in accord with their cosmo-ontological perception of the world, did not necessarily perceive their gods and other deities somewhere above and themselves somewhere below (as world religions would have us believe). Ambonwari confine their existence to paths and places on the same level as the powerful spirit-crocodiles, epitomes of the powerful earth.
Third, people's activities in Ambonwari are focused not only on places but equally on paths (paths of the ancestors, marriage paths, adoptions, exchanges) which have been experientially proved as being capable of providing new relationships, of bringing benefits and desired changes. Paths are actually strategic components of social action producing events that simultaneously modify the character of their places.
The Melanesian cosmos and the Christian universe
Casey writes that Christian conversion aims at 'the gradual ascendancy of the universe over the cosmos' (1998: 78). The colonising tendency of Christianity is to put the power of place (except Calvary, the hill outside Jerusalem where Christ was crucified, and other special places related either to his life or the Bible) into abeyance, to abolish it in favour of universal space (ibid.: 77). The universe, as Casey argues, is 'the transcendent geography of infinite space' (ibid.). 'In contrast, "cosmos" implies the particularity of place; taken as a collective term, it signifies the ingrediency of places in discrete place-worlds' (ibid.). Christianity, in the case of Melanesian cultures at least, comes in different forms and also realises its presence in different ways. While it is true that technological mode of existence, scientific rationalism, the capitalist global market, and Christianity transcend individual places and dissolve them together with their cultures, it is also true that people's cosmologies and socialites, which have always been fluid, appropriate and mould these domineering realms of the present-day world in their very specific ways.9
9 Robbins (2007a: 36-37) argues that while cosmos and society were traditionally linked in Melanesia (see, for example, contributions in de Coppet and Iteanu 1995), Christianity as a culture is characterized by a split between the morally ideal cosmos (church) and the imperfect society (state).
How Christianity enters a particular area differs from one denomination to another. Generally speaking, one can say that more benign forms of Catholicism, as long as they preserve the top position on the hierarchical scale, accommodate and tolerate local customs. In contrast, the disenchanting attitude of ascetic Protestantism simply denies the existence of local gods or spirits (Casanova 2001: 437). Such a generalization, of course, misses the differences between individual denominations within Catholicism and Protestantism. For instance, when comparing United Church (formerly Methodist Mission) and Seven-day Adventist, as they have developed on Ranongga in Western Solomon Islands, Debra McDougall writes that there 'has been a much more thorough secularization of the landscape among Adventists than among Methodist/United Church adherents' (2009: 12). While for the Methodist converts several shrines retain 'vestiges of their former power' (ibid.), the Adventist Ranonggans reject any possibility of spirits retaining their powers in the landscape. It seems obvious that a combination of specific local culture, specific denomination, and specific social and historical momentum produces specific situations about which it is difficult to generalise.
While charismatic Catholicism, as a movement within the Catholic Church, is on the one hand a de-territorialized movement, it is on the other hand, by being engaged in spiritual warfare with a local culture (Casanova 2001: 437), very much locally emplaced. By "accepting" the cosmo-ontology of their places, Ambonwari charismatics find an enemy to fight against while simultaneously fighting something that is also inseparable from their own embodiment of these same places. In other words, a struggle against local spirits is at the same time a struggle against their own emplaced existence, as has been documented, for example, for the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea by Joel Robbins (2004a).10
Depending on particular societies and cultures around the globe and depending on the particular anthropologists working in them, the changes brought about by renewal movements within Christianity are perceived either as a rupture from the past (van Dijk 1998: 157; Robbins 2003, 2007c) or as a kind of continuity of tradition (where change
10 Among the Urapmin, as Robbins (2004a, 2009) writes, the new Christian cosmology rapidly and completely replaced the ancestral one after a charismatic revival swept through the area in 1977, 18 years before it reached Ambonwari. However, despite this 'cultural rupture', the Urapmin continue to perceive their landscape as populated and owned by traditional nature spirits called motobil (Robbins 2004a: 168, 209; 2009: 113, 115). These spirits continue to harm people and inflict illness on those who have violated different taboos. In order to cure the sick, the Urapmin perform traditional pig sacrifices to these spirits. Robbins argues that these practices should be understood in terms of Urapmin Christianity and a cosmological outlook structured by Christian values rather than traditional ones (Robbins 2009: 114). The Urapmin reject the spatio-temporal present, which they seek to transcend. They devalue 'the things of this ground' (Robbins 2004a: 179). 'The spirit-filled nature of the local landscape thus adds to its status as an obstacle to Urapmin moral improvement. On several scores, then, that landscape is the source of as much trouble as good' (Robbins 2004a: 180). Robbins argues that Urapmin claims about radical change are sustainable on the cosmological level although not so in regard to their social structure and means of producing their livelihood (2009: 109, 124). In contrast, in the Ambonwari example, where traditional cosmology not only permeates all domains of people's existence including a social organisation grounded in mythology, but also makes sense of the landscape from which it emanates, it seems obvious that such a complete cosmological change is virtually impossible (Telban & Vavrova 2010: 28).
is dealt, for example, in terms of partibility of a dividual person, see Mosko 2010). In an article challenging all those who promote cultural continuity, Robbins argues that 'people's changing relation to their traditional ontology - a change Pentecostalism has wrought by introducing its own ontology and situating the traditional one within it - has made change rather than continuity the real story in particular cases' (2003: 223). He calls for a development of anthropology of rupture that would address a sharp discontinuity with old practices. While nobody denies significant cultural changes in societies under the impact of Pentecostalism and charismatic Catholicism, one can critically question whether it is helpful to generalise in the epistemological and highly dualistic way adopted by Robbins. By emphasising either continuity or change, we subscribe to two extreme temporal modes of existence while neglecting a vast grey area that lies between them and a great number of cultural layers covering the ontological bond between being and place. We lose the sight of this bond, which actually becomes the biggest problem for the members of the Catholic charismatic movement in their attacks upon their 'terrestrial' ancestral culture. More importantly, however, we do not perceive change as a new konggong 'path' (which in Karawari vernacular denotes a movement to a new place or a marriage or an exchange, that is, a change which occurs on the spatio-temporal level through relationships between different places) but we lay our emphasis on a detached axis of time. Let me elucidate this issue further.
First, rupture as such is not foreign to those small-scale societies where every first menstruation or initiation ritual was perceived as the end of a certain way of life followed (after an indispensable liminal period) by a new beginning. Being at their core cosmogonical events, the first menstruation and initiation rituals represented a rebirth, a radical reorganization of social and spatial relationships instigated by the newly initiated women and men. The temporal passage, however, was grasped and remembered mainly through changes in people's spatial movements. Second, what is happening under the influence of the Catholic charismatic movement is not, in my view, a replacement of traditional culture with a new Christian one (because every culture requires some kind of emplacement) but an ongoing persistence in a liminal state where a Christian present can exist only by being in continuous opposition to traditional past. Via the ongoing struggle to annul it, this traditional past is nevertheless continuously present; even more, it is crucial for the revivalists for their prognostic orientation towards salvation. Because of the movement's rejection of the past, its persistence in a liminal state in the present (where things "still have to be done" to achieve salvation), the movement cannot develop in time but exists in an endless ritualised state of becoming. The only way for the movement to grow is to move through space, spreading its religious teachings to other places and other people.
Whenever we look at social or cultural change in Melanesia, and how people got rid of "traditional institutions" under the impact of different Christian denominations, there all too often appears one insurmountable obstacle in people's aspiration for total transformation. This obstacle, which emerges also as a problem for anthropological explanation, is related to the question of spirits of the land, places, and the multiplicity of past and present social relationships. These relationships are created and maintained through exchange and marriage, as well as through habitual daily activities, simultaneously
prescribed by and inscribed into the landscape. While spirits of the dead can travel to and reside at the white people's places (Lattas 1998; Hirsch 2008: 148; Telban & Vavrova 2010: 24), bush spirits remain firmly situated in their places. Moreover, although many customary rituals have been abandoned they have not been forgotten (people often say that they are stored in the memory just as names are). There are also other ongoing practices and institutions that do not deal explicitly with the spirits of the surrounding places but are nevertheless responsible for a continuous creation of the landscape.
Robbins argues that rupture lies at the beginning of Christian history, in conversion and in millennial imaginings. He writes:
In all three cases, something does not just happen in time but rather happens to it. One temporal progression is halted or shattered and another is joined. It is this kind of thinking about the possibility of temporal rupture that allows people to make claims for the absolute newness of the lives they lead after conversion and of the ones they hope they will lead in the millennial future (2007c: 12).
Bruce Knauft also emphasizes intensive social and cultural change among the Gebusi of the Western Province of Papua New Guinea. Following the Gebusi perception of change as exchange of "backward" spirits and customs for those that "come up on top", Knauft writes:
When Gebusi say that they are directly exchanging their customs of the past for those of their future, however, we are presented with a different order of exchange. This is not just a reciprocity of people or valuables across time, but an exchange of very different styles of life. It is not just exchange in time, but an exchange oftime itself, an exchange of different ways of relating to time, of different modes of temporality. In the process, this exchange entails new ways of relating to oneself, to others, and to material goods (2002: 38).11
Both scholars see a radical cultural change as something that does not happen in time but something that happens to time: a new time replaces the old one. However, as people's temporalities are emplaced in the surrounding landscape (in other words, there is a mutual dependence between space and time), and as people are not, as Casey (2009: 322) writes, just in places but also of places, the question arises: does a radical social and cultural change happen to place too? Can the place be halted and exchanged in the same way as the time was, according to Robbins and Knauft, among the Urapmin and
11 Elsewhere, Knauft writes: 'Gebusi notions of temporality, in which the future was assumed to repeat the past, increasingly emphasized the unfolding of social time as a path of anticipated progress. Whereas indigenous Gebusi temporal markers, generational naming practices, and subsistence practices had emphasized cyclicity, Gebusi activities at school, church, in sport, and at the market were increasingly evaluated against the success or failure of personal achievement or development over a finite period of time' (2007: 63). If we take into account the multiplicity of people's temporalities and the oft-questioned classical binary opposition between cyclical time (attributed to "traditional" societies) and linear time (attributed to "modern" societies) Knauft's account of changes in Gebusi notions of temporality also becomes questionable.
the Gebusi? Although acknowledging distinctive situations among the Urapmin and the Gebusi, I would suggest that by implying that temporal progression can be fully halted, and one time replaced or exchanged by another, we may overlook the fact that past is not just temporal but spatial as well. Whatever people do with their past in an attempt to eliminate it from their lives, it bounces back through their places. This is evidently also the case with radical Christian conversion among the Urapmin. Moreover, if one looks from the perspective of multiple historicities that are lived by the people, one realizes that there are never just two temporal poles, before and after, but rather a specific kind of coexistence of oscillating temporalities.
Above and below, inside and outside
When Edward Casey discusses spatial orientation in terms of a universal pair above-below or up-down, he concludes that they are embedded in the upright position of the body and witnessed in language. He also says that dialectics between up and down is found in metaphysics, value hierarchies and symbolic forms. However, he then, in accord with the history of Western thought, claims that people have everywhere and always, because of above mentioned characteristics of human existence, attached a higher value to everything above and given lower and inferior status to everything below. Casey argues that people, in their continuous attempt to transcend their own gravity, privilege those places which are 'located up above in what Binswanger calls the "ethereal world" (e.g. the celestial spheres of Plato, the outermost heaven of Aristotle, the Christian Heaven, the Buddhist Pure Land) while places situated down below in the "tomb world" (underneath chthon, the eleven circles of Dante's Inferno) are regarded with disgust and disdain' (2009: 81). The earth then is a middle realm between above and below with good and bad characteristics. Such a claim can be questioned from the cosmological perspective of Ambonwari and other Melanesian societies and their conceptualization of a person.
The value given to everything above as Casey maintains is characteristic of all societies can be seen as a precursor to Cartesian rationalism (to which Casey, however, rightfully opposes) and its dualism of mind and body where the former is firmly situated in the head. Through this kind of conceptualisation of human existence, head, brain, and mind (which are above) have a higher value than body, legs, and feet (which are below), and thinking (being above) has a higher value than physical work (being below). But again, Ambonwari do not conceive mind as being situated in the head, neither do they separate it from the body. Wambung, the "insideness" of every being, which is the place of understanding, feeling and thinking, is also everything under the skin of a human being or under the bark of a plant or under the fur, skin or membrane of an animal or under the visible layer of a stone (see Telban 1998: 56-67). As such, wambung is there to do things that an empty skin cannot; but for wambung to be alive one needs a spirit. Therefore every being, a tree, an animal, a stone, or a human being has a spirit. Similarly, every place too has its own spirit, a spirit-crocodile, which gives life to the place, to its wambung, and to its surface-skin on which people, trees, and other spirits live. Without its spirit the place is dead. If the spirit-crocodile should leave its place, which is its "body", it would take with it the wambung of the place and leave behind just the dead surface.
Generally speaking, there has never been any kind of worship of the above beings in Ambonwari, nor was there in Ambonwari cosmology a tripartite structure of an above realm of mighty sky gods, a middle realm of humans and other beings, and a down below realm of dark forces. If one wants to use the metaphysical language of hierarchical relationships then one can confidently say that mighty beings (mainly spirit-crocodiles) which were once both worshipped and feared, lived and continue to live in places. 'Every named place, which includes the ground and the water, is believed to be inhabited by a spirit crocodile sharing its name with the place. One could say that the place is the spirit and the spirit is the place' (Telban & Vavrova 2010: 19). The distinction between a spirit of a place and the people who dwell at that place has even been made to disappear when humans performed rituals in order to bring the spirit onto the surface and then actually to embody it in themselves (during male initiation or when they were going to fight, see Telban 2008).
Cosmo-ontological imagery, which connects spirits, places, and people, is also exemplified in Ambonwari revival practices, sayings, and anticipations (dreams, visions). Let us take, for example, the concept of Heaven. For Ambonwari Christians, Heaven is not some kind of a pure and transcendental Biblical concept, i.e. an ultimate holy place spread over spatial infinity, but rather a concept which encompasses precisely defined places: the places of white people. These are the places where the spirits of their dead are believed to go to join other "white people-spirits", a situation that resonates a common belief all over Papua New Guinea whenever Europeans made first contact.
Let me give one well-known example from another area, before continuing with the present day situation in Ambonwari. Writing about the third cargo belief between 1914 and 1933 in the Madang District, Lawrence stated that people became involved in 'reconstruction and enlargement of their cosmos' (1967: 77). The people began to extend their boundaries in order to include Europeans and Heaven 'both of which after 1914 began to be identified with Australia in general and Sydney... in particular' (1967:77, 236). God, together with their own spirits of the dead, was believed to live in Sydney or just above it, the place above being connected to the place below by a ladder. There was no shortage of wealth in this Sydney-Heaven. In the fifth Cargo belief and as a consequence of wartime experiences of people overseas, Brisbane and Rome (as represented in the Queensland Museum and also believed to be connected to Heaven by a ladder), were added to the unity of cosmos (Lawrence 1967: 238). In the first two Cargo Beliefs, which characterized the period in Madang District between 1871 and 1914, people identified Europeans as part of their environment, either as gods and spirits from their own place (cosmos limited to their own place) or as human beings from some other place (cosmos expanding to another island society). In the third Cargo Belief, as I have already mentioned, the cosmos expanded even further. But change - exchange - was not realized in material terms and the relationships between people and gods as well as between people themselves had to be redefined. The age of the cosmos, however, remained shallow, while cosmic time was not affected by contact, 'had little chronological meaning and was not associated with the concept of change' (Lawrence 1967: 226 and passim; see also Lattas 1998).
It is with the places of white people, i.e. the Heaven, where the spirits of their dead have in the opinion of many already gone, that Ambonwari people would like to
form different paths and relationships. Individuals quite often tell stories about having visions of their recently deceased relatives, either parents or children, seeing them as being well dressed with all those material things (shoes, a watch, a car, and so on) which for them represent white people's wealth. They are perceived as coming from the white people's places (Telban & Vavrova 2010). The spirits of their dead became a kind of conduit to the world of the Whites and everything that belongs to them. People often think of material wealth and how to get it. The first Ambonwari Catholic charismatic leader Robin, for instance, said in 2008: 'I find it hard. I pray and I see the money only with my eyes, a picture like on EMTV or on video. It is hard for me to hold it (money), to make it come to a clear place (i.e. to materialize), it is hard. I see it with my eyes, but I do not know how to get it. This makes it hard.' Some of the villagers try to ask their dead relatives for money by writing them letters, which they give to the ethnographers who are supposed to deliver them upon their return to Europe.12 Other villagers asked the ethnographers if they would provide them with a white child whom they could adopt and, after he or she grew up, could return to Europe on their behalf. All these explorations of imaginary geographies beyond their living places (Lattas 1998: 100), and the relational paths which they try to create between the two worlds, enable Ambonwari people to envisage a wealthier form of existence, which would be closer to God and the white people.
Towards a conclusion: Paths and places
Among the Iatmul of Kandingei from the Middle Sepik, the primal crocodile named Palingawi by one clan and Kabakmeli by another was the first living creature that appeared at the time of creation and is identified by earth (Wassmann 1991: 69).13 His dual mode of existence, stationary when dealing with creation of earth and different places, and migratory when dealing with the paths of arrival of two clan founders, reveals first of all cosmological and subsequently social patterns of life as it is lived not only in Kandingei but also among several other societies in the wider Sepik region. It frames multiple levels of relationships and connections, which become disclosed through the knowledge of myths, place names, and the names of different beings, human and non-human.
According to their myths of origin, Ambonwari places did not begin by people's inscription of their sociality on them, but came into existence in primal times together with mythological beings, some of which became those places (other beings, for example, turned into sago palms and other useful plants). When the Ambonwaris' first ancestors arrived in the region, they were able to change into the spirit-crocodiles that were the places (as I mentioned earlier, such a transformation was envisioned also during male initiation ritual, Telban 2008). In this way, places and people's sociality within these places were simultaneously created and, because people live within the eternal moment of creation, continue to be so. In this way, as Ingold argues, elaborating upon Myers' (1986)
12	The situations described in this paragraph were experienced by me and Daniela Vavrova during our joined fieldwork in 2005, 2007-2008 and 2011.
13	Andi, an old Iatmul word for earth (Wassmann 1991: 66), is the present day word for earth in the unrelated Karawari language spoken in Ambonwari.
study of the Pintupi understanding of the landscape, 'the movement of social life is itself a movement in (not on) a landscape' (2000: 53-54). Space and time are merged in a place. There is actually no space and no time, but only people's experience in and of place.
Arguing against the tendency of continuity thinking in anthropological discourse, Robbins creates a radical dichotomy between continuity and discontinuity identifying habitus, structures of longue durée, localization, indigenization, and syncretism within the former category, and practice, history, modernity and globalization in the latter (2007c: 10). In my view, continuity can be identified in the binding character of place, while discontinuity, which in Ambonwari is equated with new connectivity (inter-subjectivity), can be perceived in the open character of paths. However, neither of them can exist apart from the other. The cosmos with its multiplicity of places and paths provides the members of Ambonwari society with the possibility to choose and favour particular places and paths during their lives while past generations had chosen their own paths and places during theirs. This is the world familiar to Ambonwari and similar societies who experience and recognize the bond between being and place in their cosmo-ontological imagery. In such a world discontinuity (i.e. inter-subjectivity experienced through new marriages, new exchanges, deaths and births, rituals) is a necessary part of continuity. In such a world, discontinuity enables continuity.
Ambonwari cosmology, culture, and sociality came out of the earth and - following not only their ritual creativity but daily practices and verbal expressions - remained firmly emplaced in their places. By moving their thoughts and sayings from earth to Heaven, and by abandoning or neglecting all those practices that created and maintained a bond between people and spirit-crocodiles, they turned their backs on their ancestors and their practices and simultaneously loosened their attachment to their place. By suppressing their own space-time, they created a situation in which they reject to be beings of the place as lived by and known to their ancestors. They are rather beings against the place. This undertaking, however, is not so easily realized because their social organization, kin relations, naming system, subsistence practices, and lived experiences of past and present events remain firmly attached to the places they occupy. While their powerless spirit-crocodiles are still very much in their places, however, the spirits of the dead have already begun to move from the place of the spirits upriver to Heaven, i.e. the place of the white people. In other words, their recently dead went on a journey, carrying their place to the places of the Whites, trying to establish connections and then put their newly acquired wealth (e.g. relationships, knowledge, material goods, and money) back into the place. This is their new future-oriented imaginary in the process of being materialized.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Slovenian Research Agency, the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences, and the Cairns Institute, James Cook University, where I have been affiliated for a year as a Research Scholar from April 2010. I would also like to thank the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research for a grant awarded jointly to me and Daniela Vavrova before going to Ambonwari for a yearlong fieldwork in 2011. A shorter version of this article was presented at the Australian
Anthropological Society Annual Conference, Macquarie University, Sydney, 9-11 December 2009. Expanded versions were delivered in the seminar series at Macquarie University, Sydney, on 9 September 2010, at James Cook University, Cairns, on 29 October 2010, and at Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur l'Océanie, Marseille, on 31 May 2013. I am grateful to Daniela Vavrova and Michael Wood who offered a constructive critique of the very first draft of this article, and to Michael Goddard and Deborah Van Heekeren for their advice how to improve it. Special thanks to Michael Young for his invaluable reading of my text and helpful comments.
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Povzetek
V preteklih letih je nekaj različnih obnovitvenih gibanj v krščanstvu imelo velik vpliv na melanezijske družbe in kulture. Ne glede na to pa se je v težnjah ljudi po popolni preobrazbi pogosto pojavila nepremagljiva ovira: trdna vez med bitjem in krajem. Ambonwarijci iz province Vzhodni Sepik na Papui Novi Gvineji se soočajo z enako težavo vse odkar je decembra 1994 katoliško karizmatično gibanje doseglo njihovo vas. Njihova kozmologija in družbena organizacija sta že od nekdaj neločljivi od njihovih poti (potovanj, porok , izmenjav, posvojitev) in krajev (krajev mitoloških prednikov, starih in novih vasi, krajev drugih skupin, krajev za pridelavo sagove moke, ribolovnih krajev, prepovedanih krajev, začasnih bivališč ob reki), svojo zgodovinskost pa razumejo in opredeljujejo predvsem v smislu kraja. Pripadniki katoliškega karizmatičnega gibanja poskušajo odpraviti njihovo krajevno preteklost, preseči njihove ozemeljske meje in hkrati spremeniti njihove kraje. Ker pa ambonwarijska kozmologija sloni na mnogoterih krajevnih časovnostih, imajo katoliški karizmatični voditelji težave s spodkopavanjem te raznolikosti. Prav ta mnogoterost krajevne zgodovinskosti in ne zgolj čas, jim predstavlja največjo težavo.
KLJUČNE BESEDE: časovnost, prostor in čas, katoliško karizmatično gibanje, religija, Papua Nova Gvineja
CORRESPONDENCE: BORUT TELBAN, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Novi trg 2, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia, E-mail: borut.telban@zrc-sazu.si.
Modern forms of Buryat shaman activity on the Olkhon Island
Aleksandra Wierucka
University of Gdansk, aleksandra.wierucka@wp.pl
Abstract
Buryats live in Siberia. Their traditions are rapidly changing, but in some areas their traditional religion, shamanism, has survived. Even though it is influenced by globalisation, it still retains a quite strong position. Various shamanistic practices have been observed on Olkhon Island on Lake Baikal. These practices exist as the reaction to local people's needs as well as to the demands of the modern world. Drawing on the fieldwork conducted in 2010, this article focuses on three forms of practicing shamanism: the first is mostly for tourists; the second is conducted via the shamans' organisation; the third is practiced in small villages. All these forms portray the diversity of a modern shamanism that changes and seeks its place in a complex reality.
KEYWORDS: Buryat shamanism, shamanistic practices, indigenous peoples of Siberia
Introduction
Shamanism has become a popular subject in recent decades (Narby & Huxley 2001: 4). There seems to be a lot of speculation about the "revival" of traditional shamanism and about the so-called neoshamanism (Townsend 2004: 49). Both of these phenomena are often confused. Nevertheless, knowledge about shamanism is not common. The practice is frequently considered a "satanic" act; however, shamanism has nothing in common with Christian view of diabolic activities. Many nations in the world practice shamanism. It is one of the oldest religious systems and, despite years of persecution of shamans and shamanists (adherents of shamanism), the foundations of the system has been preserved to this very day.
Shamanism is a peculiar kind of belief, the adherents of which acknowledge the existence of a supernatural realm parallel to everyday reality, inhabited by ghosts and deities capable of interfering with human souls. In most cases, those beings are not amicable and can harm people. The shaman is the only person that possesses the ability to communicate with ghosts in their world. Through falling in the trance and separating the body from the soul, the shaman can wander in the supernatural world in order to help the fellow tribesmen. While in the trance, the shaman can perceive and manipulate
ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTEBOOKS 19 (3): 101-119. ISSN 1408-032X
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all supernatural elements. Depending on the culture, the trance can be achieved through singing (e.g. Huaorani in South America) (Wierucka 2012: 52), playing drums (e.g. Tuvans in Siberia) (Kenin-Lopsan 1997: 111), using hallucinogens (e.g. Sacha Runa in South America) (Whitten 1976: 40) or through all these methods (e.g. Buryats in Siberia) (Fridman 2004: 94). In fact, it is impossible to perceive shamanism as homogeneous phenomenon, because each culture practices it in a different way.
The word shaman comes from the language of Siberian Evenks (Vitebsky 2001:10), and it initially meant "the man of power" in the Evenk culture. Later, the term started to be used to describe people of power in cultures of North America, while in the 20th century it became a definition of all people practicing trance and contact with the supernatural world. Over the course of time, the word became a description of various witch-doctors, healers or herbalists. Nowadays, even artists describe themselves as shamans, justifying this with altered state of consciousness they achieve when creating their works.1 Of course, in this place we should consider the definition of shamanism and shaman, i.e. whether the term shaman should be applied to someone merely entering the trance, or someone who establishes contact with the supernatural, or perhaps we should use it to describe people who contribute to the society they live in through their activities? The Shamanism Encyclopedia defines the term shaman as a person 'exploring the world of ghosts and human souls through a trance, the state of altered consciousness, used to make contact with the world of ghosts for the benefit of society' (Walter & Fridman 2004: xi). In this sense, shamans would be people not only capable of entering the trance (regardless of the method), but also people who through their activities in the supernatural world are able to help their communities in solving various problems. This definition of shamanism will be adopted in the present work.
Tribal cultures practice shamanism in various ways. Nowadays, due to the new, sometimes very new, elements of media, this traditional variety is becoming even more diverse. Attempts made at merging the traditional and modern elements brought about an image of contemporary forms of shamanism that (due to their diversity) fulfil the needs of society or expectations of the outer world. The diversity of shamanistic practices held in Buryatia in central Siberia is a prime example of shamanism being adapted to the changing reality.
Cultural background
With a population of half a million, the Buryats constitute one of the biggest cultural groups of Siberia. They inhabit Irkutsk Oblast, the Buryat Autonomous Republic and several neighbouring Russian oblasts and parts of Mongolia. Names such as Brat, Bratsk or Buriaad (Friedrich 1994: 65) are also applied, the latter being used by the Buryats themselves. The Buryat language belongs the northern subgroup of Mongolian languages
1 The phenomenon was especially visible during the International Society of Shamanistic Research conference, held in October 2011, when 75% of presentations were focused not on the shamanism related to various cultures, but on the problems of artists and their work perceived as the effect of trance activities.
(family of Altaic languages). Until 1930, the Buryats had been using the Mongol-Altai writing system, between 1931 and 1939 they used Latin alphabet, and in 1939 they adopted the Cyrillic script, which they continue to use (ibid.). This brief analysis of the Buryat language notation system give us a clue about the influence of history on Buryat culture and about the changes that took place in the 20th century and earlier, before Buryatia became a part of Soviet Union and later Russia.
Until the 17th century, Buryats led nomadic lives breeding cattle. Due to the necessity of traveling fast with their herds, Buryats' houses were made of light wood covered with felt (the so-called yurts, in Buryat ger). The yurts could be entered from the south only. Later, Russian settlers popularised wooden houses built on a rectangular plan. Initially, the Buryats adapted the settlers' technique and used only wood to construct their houses. Over time, however, they adopted the Western type of house structure. Today, the yurts covered with felt can be seen only in museums, open-air museums or during various folk culture festivals.
Apart from breeding cattle, the Buryats were occupied with hunting (mainly deer, bears, foxes and wolves) for meat and furs. As in the case of most nomadic cultures, the meat constituted the main element of Buryats' diet, apart from milk and dairy products. Kumys, fermented horse milk that supposedly possess healing and magical properties, is one of the most famous Buryat products. Another traditional dairy product is called tarasun. It is a kind of alcohol, which today is often laced with vodka. During the period of Russian settlers' influx, the Buryats adopted the practice of baking bread, but it never played a significant role in their diet (ibid.).
Buryat society is patrilineal: the man and his closest relatives constitute the basic social unit, the so-called ulas, in most cases inhabiting a single village. A couple of
Figure 1: Map of Buryatia in Russian Federation (A. Wierucka)
villages inhabited by people related to each other constitutes the so-called urag. Several urags constitute a clan, the so-called xolbon or obag (Fridman 2004: 101). The entire Buryat society was formerly divided into layers, including aristocracy, peasant class and slaves. Nowadays, those traditional social layers disappeared, and the Buryat society demonstrates a structure similar to the Russian society.
The Russian influence had a significant importance for cultural changes that took place in Buryatia. The first Russian settlers appeared on the Buryat lands in about 1645. Soon after, in 1689, Russia signed a treaty with the Manchurian Empire, which established a border between Russian and China states on the Argun River. Buryatia became a part of Russia during the reign of Peter I, at the beginning of the 18th century. In the middle of the 19th century, the Zabaykalskyi region was separated from Irkutsk province and became a distinct administrative region (Zabaykalskyi Rayon). At the beginning of the 20th century, in 1917, the first autonomous administrative unit was created. It included the terrains of Buryatia - Buryat-Mongol State, which in 1923 was transformed into Buryat-Mongol Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic with its capital city in Verkhneudinsk (later renamed to Ulan-Ude). The date is considered the year of creation of Buryat Republic, that since 1992 has possessed an independent status within the Russian Federation.
The culture of Russian settlers has influenced the local Buryat culture for hundreds of years. Houses, discussed above, built following Russian designs, or the system of language notation constitute only external signs of cultural changes. The changes, however, were much more profound in those areas of culture that are not so clearly visible at first glance. The former social structure eventually decayed, and years of repression strongly affected the possibility of language preservation. Today, many Buryats speaks only Russian, even though there are still villages south of Baikal where the inhabitants use their ancestors' language on a daily basis.
The local economy that used to be based on breeding cattle and hunting also underwent changes. Nowadays, many Buryats suffer from poverty and have no hope for any change of their situation. Few people can afford their own cattle, game was killed off long time ago, and the sandy soil makes it difficult to cultivate plants. Modern Buryat society is also strongly affected by alcoholism, influencing both older and younger generations.
Traditional Buryat shamanism
Since ancient times, shamanism was the religion of the Buryats. According to Buryat mythology, the first shaman was an eagle that summoned good spirits that were supposed to protect people against evil demons. However, people could not understand the eagle's speech, and they did not trust it. The eagle asked the good spirits for the gift of speech to make the Buryats capable of understanding its words. The spirits agreed, and the outcome of the relationship of the eagle and a Buryat woman was the birth of a man who possessed shamanistic powers (Fridman 2004: 90).
The Buryats believe that each human being possesses three souls: one is located in the skeleton; the second one can travel the world in the form of a bee or wasp (dreams are considered to be the travels of this soul); the third one is transformed to another living being after death (the first soul disappears then while the second one is eaten by the spirits)
(Sandschejew 1927: 576). The second soul is the most prone to the influence of evil ghosts and can easily be scared. If a soul is lost or possessed by the demons, the assistance of a shaman becomes necessary. Using traditional methods, the shaman may visit the supernatural realm of the ghosts to restore the soul of a sick person. During the ceremony of soul restoring, the shaman uses white food products, while the sick person sits on a piece of new, white felt. Red silk thread stretched from the centre of a yurt to the nearest birch is meant to show the summoned soul the path towards the sick person. A man with a horse should stand next to the birch; this is notable because horses were believed to be the first creatures to notice the sought after soul. Next, the soul should enter the man holding the horse and then it will go along the thread to the yurt and into the sick person. The shaman sprinkles participants of the ceremony with milk or vodka, sings prayers to protective spirits and asks them for their assistance in restoring the soul of the sick person. The shaman enters a trance and restores the soul of the sick person (Sandschejew 1927: 580-3).
Apart from healing, the shamans also protected the local community against evil ghosts, conducted rituals and ceremonies as well as foretold the future. In their practice, they used drums that helped them to enter the trance. The apparel was also a key element. It included a special cap symbolising the protective spirit and long coat decorated with metal elements in shape of humans, animals, bells, etc. They depicted spirits, the power of which was adopted by the shaman during the trance (Fridman 2004: 145).
Buryat shamans may be divided into "white" and "black" categories. During the trance, a black shaman visits the underworld, while a white shaman travels to the overground, "heavenly" world (Basilov 1997: 36). So-called "mixed" shamans have started to appear, utilising both of these shamanistic systems (Kumin 2001).
In most cases, only an adult male over thirty years old could receive signs foretelling his shamanistic destiny. The so called shamanistic disease, which frequently brought adepts to the verge of death, was probably the most characteristic symptom of readiness. In most cases, the elder shaman read signs, healed the sick adept and conducted the ritual of shamanistic initiation. The power itself chose the shaman, while the disease was its symptom.
From 1920 onward, shamanism was prohibited in Soviet Union. Shamans could not conduct ceremonies and rituals, objects of magical importance were confiscated while shamans themselves were often sentenced to prison or death.
Buryat shamanism cannot be discussed without mentioning one of the forms of Buddhism, called Lamaism. The form of Buryat shamanism is a result of mutual interaction of these two religious systems.
Buddhist missionaries became active in Buryatia at the beginning of the 18th century. They were mostly lamas from Tibet, who gained the trust of the area's inhabitants due to former's prayers and medicine. In the first half of the 18th century (about 1730), the first dacan appeared, i.e. a combination of a monastery and Buddhist temple. Later, Lamaism spread through the whole of contemporary Buryatia. The turn of the 18th and 19th centuries was a period of its rapid development (Fridman 2004: 121). Just like local shamans, the lamas were controlled by the law and administration. The state tried to regulate the amount of lamas, their practices and lands they owned. However, both systems could develop in a relatively free manner until 1920, when Soviet authorities seized the lands that belonged to
the monasteries and temples, and forbade lamas to conduct religious practices. By 1930, all Buddhist monasteries in Buryatia had been closed or destroyed, and 16,000 lamas had been banished, imprisoned or killed (Fridman 2004: 123). A partial revival of Buddhism in Buryatia took place in 1946, when two monasteries were created there. Lamas could conduct prayers and rituals as long as they remained loyal to the Soviet authorities.
Nowadays, Buddhism is the main religion of Buryatia, and it is much easier to find a Buddhist than a shamanist there. The main reason for this situation may be the fact that people were afraid to reveal their religion due to the years of persecution of shamans and shamanists. Nevertheless, shamanists constitute a minority, even though frequently they are not aware that some elements of their religion stem not from ancient shamanism, but from Lamaistic practices that were adopted by the traditional Buryat shamanism.
The cult of obo, holy places of power, is one of the most visible manifestations of the specific syncretism of Buryat shamanism. Adherents of Buryat shamanism treat such places with particular respect, and the spirits that protect them are given offerings in forms of coins, ribbons, sweets or cigarettes. If a spirit does not receive an offering, it may harm people who neglected this duty. The intentions behind the offerings are different in Buddhism and in shamanism, even though it looks similar in both of these systems. Lamaism assumes that offerings are a manifestation of love of the spirit, of good feelings towards it. In shamanism, the offering is an expression of fear of harm that dissatisfied spirit could do (Fridman 2004: 133).
Many other rituals practiced by the Buddhists and shamanists in the region have similar character, even though these two religions differ from each other significantly. First, Buddhism is based on its written canon, while shamanism is an oral, unwritten and non-canonical religion. The fusion of Buddhist and shamanistic elements is not unilateral; over time, local lamas have also adapted some elements of shamanism that nowadays are considered Buddhist. The splashing milk in all four directions of the world (as a form of offering) or offerings to local waters and mountains - both these customs stem from shamanistic traditions. Therefore, the interweaving of those two religious systems for more than three hundred years has resulted in the appearance of not only a specific type of shamanism, but also gave birth to a specific kind of Lamaism. Both systems are practiced only in Buryatia and surrounding areas. Even though the Buddhism and shamanism of the area took peculiar and fascinating forms, the present work focuses only on the shamanism and its modern manifestations.
Modern forms of Buryat shaman activities
The present material was gathered during the fieldwork conducted in Buryatia, near Lake Baikal in 2010. The observed forms of shamanistic activity can be divided into three types, which can be classified (quite paradoxically) on the basis of their media usefulness. The peculiarity of the above statement will be explained in the more detail.
Buryat shamanism was fought by Soviet authorities from 1920 onward. Many shamans were killed or imprisoned; many others had to hide or abandon their traditions. As a result, generational continuity was interrupted. Traditionally, it was the senior, frequently old shaman, who was supposed to choose the heir, explain the shamanistic disease and its consequences as well as teach the practices to the chosen representative of a new generation. Modern shamans frequently had no one to learn from. There was
no older shaman to help them, thus some elements of shamanism were lost or forgotten. However, many traditions were secretly preserved.
Since 1992 and the change of the political system in Russia, shamanism can be practiced openly, but, as we have mentioned earlier, many people are not willing to openly admit their ways. That is why the study of local shamanism is difficult. Village dwellers are not keen to speak, when we tried to raise subjects connected with shamanism, they refused to talk at all. Interestingly enough, our Polish origins made contact with Buryats during our study easier. It was possible, because an average Buryat knows some of the history of Poland and is fairly familiar with our country's relationships with the Soviet Union and later Russia. The Smolensk disaster in 20102 was an additional reason for this interest in Poland. The study was conducted in the summer of 2010, only five months after the event. Inhabitants of villages by the Lake Baikal knew about the Polish tragedy and expressed their compassion. To some degree they united with us, and this also allowed them to open themselves to other subjects.
The study was conducted on Olkhon Island, a place that is tremendously important for Buryat shamanism. It is located by the Lake Baikal and separated from the land by the so called Male Morie (Small Sea). The open waters of Lake Baikal can be seen at the other, south-east side of the island. Olkhon is the biggest island on the lake, covering 742 km2.
Figure 2: A map of Buryatia and Lake Baikal with Olkhon Island (A. Wierucka)
2 On April 10th 2010 the plane carrying Polish president with his wife and many government officials crashed close to the airport in Smolensk, Russia. All 96 people died in the crash. The officials were going to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the events in Katyn (a mass execution of Polish nationals carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the Soviet secret police, in April and May 1940).
The island contains a holy place for the Buryats (consequently, the Russian authorities conducted activities aimed at the area's desacralisation in recent decades). The holy rock known as the Shamanka (Lady Shaman)3 is located just off shore of the island and is the main theme of numerous legends. One of them depicts a female shaman, who lived in a cave carved in the rock. Because the rock is actually a small peninsula by Lake Baikal, the shaman was inaccessible and could live in peace. That is where the name of the rock, Shamanka, comes from. The name's meaning is much deeper, however, and is not only a background for the ancient legend. The rock has mystical importance, it is a place of annual meetings of the spirits; they come to the Shamanka from the supernatural world on their horses. When spirits are occupied with the issues of mortal men, the ghosts of the horses remain at the rock. In ancient times, the power of this place was so strong that traditionally women were not allowed to climb the rock. Women were considered too sensitive to supernatural matters. Unfortunately, the Shamanka have become a tourist attraction; visitors damage it with graffiti and trash. It still has a crucial importance for the Buryats, although many visitors are not aware of place's significance for the local culture.
Figure 3: Shamanka on Olkhon Island (photo A. Wierucka)
3 Interestingly, in the languages of Evenks and Buryats, there is no word for a female shaman, only the male version of the word is available. Shamanka comes from the Russian language, in which the adaptation of a word shaman caused the creation of its female version (with feminine ending -ka) used to describe a woman-shaman (in Evenks' and Buryats' languages, there is no Slavic rule of ending feminine words with -a).
The fieldwork was conducted in the biggest village of Olkhon, Khuzhir, and in surrounding villages inhabited by the Buryats. Today, there are not as many Buryats on the Olkhon Island as there once were. More of them inhabit the south of the Lake Baikal, but we decided to hold our study on the island for a reason. Each year, the island hosts the Tajlagan, a shamanistic ceremony attended not only by the shamans from Buryatia, but also by those from Mongolia and Tuva. Observation of this ritual was one of the goals of our journey, but this will be discussed in the following chapter of the present work.
Shaman for the tourists
Olkhon is a traveling destination for many Europeans. The powers of Shamanka or Khoboy Cape has been known for a long time. Young people arrive here also to adore the vastness of the sky and water, to feel the clear air and cold waves of Lake Baikal. The deepest lake of the world, containing 20% of all the world's fresh water, it invariably makes a massive impression on the tourists. Sunrises and sunsets at the lake shore can be fascinating, as well as swirling clouds or falling rain. It is difficult to say whether it is the matter of water or air properties, but surely, each moment at the Lake Baikal is unique. Nevertheless, not many visitors have knowledge of the local culture. When we asked tourists from all around the world, not only they did not understand the complexity of Buryat culture, but in most cases they did not even know that the area has been inhabited by the Buryats for centuries. When we asked the visitors about the Buryats, it was frequently the first time they have ever heard the ethnonym. Therefore, it is unsurprising that they did not have general knowledge about various aspects of Buryat culture.
Valentin Khagdaev, a Buryat shaman who practices the ancient tradition on Olkhon, tries to fill this gap with his work. He is controversial, but some of the facts seem to work in his advantage.
Valentin Khagdaev was born in 1960 in the family of well-known blacksmiths. His grandfather was a shaman of immense power. From the very beginning, Valentin knew that his path should be connected with shamanism: he was born with a double thumb, a sign that clearly indicated the interference of spirits and marked him with a stigma of power.
As a child, Valentin entered the trance and saw his body turned into bubbles. When bubbles became numerous, the boy was approached by spirits who tried to help him. They asked him questions, and someone answered them. Valentin did not want to return to the ground, because he felt good up in the air, where he floated in the form of the bubbles. Despite those early signs of affinity to the group of shamans, Valentin underwent his initiation when he was thirty years old. In accordance with the Buryat tradition, only adults can undergo the initiation, because children could not bear the shamanistic powers. Valentin was given the shamanistic attributes by an 85-year-old shaman. Valentin's protective spirits are the eagle, lizard and black horse he was given during his initiation (Fridman 2004: 202).
Valentin claims that most prominent cultural activities that should be conducted on Olkhon include the revitalisation of traditional religion and language (the island's inhabitants can no longer speak the Buryat language) and the restoration of respect for
the nature (contemporary lack of respect for nature is clearly visible on Olkhon Island: in abandoned, deteriorating factories, in omnipresent waste disposal sites and in the polluted waters of Lake Baikal, contaminated with various types of sewage and waste). The shaman expresses his anxiety about the future of Buryat culture.
The main goal that Khagdaev set for himself is to make tourists aware of the Buryat culture and religion. Even though the task is noble and the shaman himself is a member of the Buryat culture and bears all signs of shamanistic powers, his show (it is difficult to describe it as a performance, and it certainly cannot be treated as a trance or another manifestation of the power) is clearly disappointing and gives birth to many questions that, sadly, remain unanswered.
At first, the shaman spread tree bark smoke over his audience; next, he used Tibetan Singing Bowls to purify us with sound. Next, Valentin started his story about Buryat culture and shamanism. When he discussed various sources that describe the shamanism, he collated such names as Eliade and Castaneda; this seemed to be dubious (Mircea Eliade was a scientist who wrote the most famous work about shamanism, while Carlos Castaneda is known mainly for his popular-science publications, the reliability of which has frequently been questioned). Next, he presented a definition of shamanism he worked on for years:
Shamanism is love and respect for the language and legends of the nation, it is a cult of holy fire, great ancestors, rulers of the villages, soil, sky, the Sun and the Moon. It means paying homage to the creator of the Earth and to mother nature. It means life in harmony with the nature and evasion of harm towards others (Valentin Khagdaev's utterance during a meeting organised on Olkhon Island on 29 July 2010).
It seems that even shamans themselves have their own definitions of shamanism, or maybe it is them who should provide this definition, not the theoreticians who are not capable of understanding the matters connected with shamanistic practice fully. In the following part of the meeting, Khagdaev quoted texts in Buryat language and talked about Buryat culture.
A scientist from Krasnoyarsk, who cooperated with us during the fieldwork, defined Valentin Khagdaev as cultural animator. We think that it is one of the most precise descriptions of his activities. Undoubtedly, the activities ofKhagdaev are necessary on Olkhon, i.e. education in the fields of culture, religion, practices and customs, as well as teachings about signs and symbols. However, it still is not the traditional Buryat shamanism the we were looking for during our study. Residents of Khuzhir treat Khagdaev with a slight trace of disdain, reflecting their knowledge about his frequent contacts with media and tourists. They shared information that Khagdaev does not "heal" them, but they are attended by a shaman from another village who looks after them. Therefore, Khagdaev's activities can be perceived as educating visitors and teaching about shamanistic activity, but not necessarily actually practicing it.
Shaman Khagdaev is an unusually media-friendly person. He has appeared in numerous interviews, documentaries, and he makes use of all modern technology. This should come as no surprise, because he is clearly a 21st century man, and no one has ever claimed that shamans should be people who live traditional lives. In a world full of technology, its use is perfectly natural. Moreover, Khagdaev is well educated: he has
a degree in philosophy and doctorate in humanistic studies. Nowadays, he works as a museum director in Yelca.
It is easy to check the general opinion about him expressed by modern media. A brief internet search on 20 January 2013 yielded 371 pages of results concerning this shaman; most of them use descriptions such as: 'one of the most famous shamans of Russian Federation', 'main shaman of Olkhon', 'the most important shaman in the area,' or even 'the greatest wizard of Olkhon'.4
Figure 4: Shaman Valentin Khagdaev talking on the phone during a break in the meeting (July 29, 2010) (photo A. Wierucka)
Periodicals corroborate these opinions. For instance, the Polish magazine Polityka in one of its issues included the following description of Khagdaev: 'the most authentic, commissioned by the spirits (the sixth finger is its sign)' (Bunda & Sapala 2004). It seems that shaman Khagdaev is present in media and in the consciousness of tourists visiting Olkhon. Unfortunately, it only gives evidence of people's ignorance in the field of both Buryat and shamanistic traditions. Even the most basic information within this field would make it easier to verify the shaman's activity - and he is an extremely busy
4 Citations come from the pages: http://taraka.pl/szamanKhagdaev, accessed on 8 October 2012. http://wiadomosci.ngo.pl/wiadomosci/39067.html, accessed on 8 October 2012.
http://wyborcza.pl/dziennikkolymski/5,109329,6709473,Zdjecia_z_podrozy_Jacka_Hugo_Badera.html?i=98, accessed on 8 October 2012.
http://wiadomosci.wp.pl/kat,1330,title,Wielkie-sprzatanie-wyspy-czarownikow,wid,280375,wiadomosc.html.
man, his schedule is always heavily packed. It is virtually impossible to arrange a meeting with him without significant advance arrangements, and even during a scheduled séance the shaman receives numerous phone calls and arranges meetings with other people. As we have mentioned earlier, Khagdaev's activities are beneficial for Olkhon Island and its surroundings. Nevertheless, we felt that we were looking for a different kind of shaman.
Shamans in the organisation
Some groups of Buryats recognise the hierarchy of gods or spirits. The western group, inhabiting the areas around the Lake Baikal, accepts a certain category of gods that are situated higher in the hierarchy than the ancestors' ghosts. These gods are called tengeri or tengri (heaven in the Buryat language). According to the subject literature, this category of gods has no significant influence on shamanistic rituals (Hamayon 1999: 85). There are ninety-nine Tengeris, each of them has its own name, and they are divided into two groups: eastern (zuni) and western (buruni) (Czaplicka 2007: 148). The God Father, known also
Figure 5: A shaman turned towards the Shamanka during the Tajlagan (photo A. Wierucka)
as the High Sky (von Lupke 2009: 234), is the hundredth tengeri. The word tengeri is nowadays used to describe a group of Buryat shamans called Mestnaya Religioznaya Organizatsiya Shamanov, registered in Ulan-Ude, the capital city of Buryatia. Shamans of this group can be found during the Tajlagan ritual, when they gather from various sides of the state and from abroad. Very often they are accompanied by shamans from Mongolia and Tuva. Tajlagan is a social ceremony, the aim of which is to honour the clan's spirits (Stutley 2003: 54). Today, it has a slightly broader meaning as it is both the meeting of shamans from the area, as well as a great occasion for local adherents to meet with shamans and ask them for help.
Tajlagan begins around 11 a.m. Residents of nearby villages, shamans and spectators gather on the square by the lake, where they can all clearly see the Shamanka Rock. Nine birches, cut specially for this occasion, are put firmly in the ground. A birch is the holy tree for the Buryats and constitutes a vital element during most important rituals.
At the very beginning, all participants of the ritual are symbolically purified. Women and men looking at the shamans' work (among them shamanists, tourists, journalists, etc.) sit at two opposite sides of the square and are not allowed to enter the area occupied by the shamans until midday.
Tables set in front of the shamans are full of offerings to the spirits; nowadays these offerings include mainly vodka and milk, but sometimes also sweets or cigarettes. The ceremony begins with a rhythmic, long-lasting drumming. The offering of a sheep is a crucial moment; it is done by the fire. The meat is then cooked and later put under the birches as a symbolic offering.
Figure 6: Shamans' tables with offerings (photo A. Wierucka)
Blue scarves are attached to the treetops as a sign of the High Sky. In earlier times, people used pelts of white hares or deer, but now colourful pieces of fabric are usually used instead. A decorated birch symbolises a tree of life in Buryat culture.
During the ceremony, colourful ribbons are attached to the birches, and in the end all nine trees are put in one place where they are symbolically offered in the fire. Participants of the Tajlagan walk around the flame three times in order to thank the spirits for their help and to secure the ghosts' assistance in the future.
Figure 7: Shamans during Tajlagan with decorated birches in the background
(photo A. Wierucka)
The ritual is not what it used to be. It is conducted not by twelve shamans, but by every shaman that attend it. Sometimes there are more than twenty shamans leading the ritual (as it was during 2010 Tajlagan). In earlier times, each family that took part in the celebration needed to bring a sheep for the offering. Today only one sheep is ritually killed, and its meat is not consumed by all participants of the ceremony, but is entirely offered to the spirits after it is cooked. Traditionally, during the second part of Tajlagan, the spirits were also offered a mare (Stutley 2003: 54; Hoppal 2007: 111), but this custom is no longer practiced.
During the ritual, the shamans enter a trance many times. During the first part of the celebration, they summon the spirits that await at the Shamanka Rock, visible in the distance. The spirits eventually come, and the shamans are ready to help the adherents. Shamanists gather around a shaman, who enters the trance. When words of spirits are
uttered, the adherents crowd at shaman's feet with their requests. For an observer from the outside, this part of the ritual appears to be the most "real" one - the shamans become intermediaries between the spirits and the people, between the supernatural and the everyday reality, and simultaneously they act for the benefit of the local community.
At the end of the second part of the ritual, the shamans sit in a single row and thank the spirits for their help. The sound of numerous drums is tremendously moving and even though they can be heard many times during the day, this moment at sunset is especially touching. Tajlagan lasts for several hours and ends shortly before sunset.
Figure 8: Ending of Tajlagan (photo A. Wierucka)
Shamans from Tengeri organisation look remarkably similar, wearing long blue coats made of glossy material, sewn according to the characteristic, traditional Buryat design. Before they enter the trance, they put special caps with fringes covering their faces on their heads. The caps have eyes sewn into them that symbolise the protective spirit. On top of the cap, the shamans put special hats with horns and ribbons. Each shaman has a circular, metal mirror hung on his neck. It is supposed to protect them against evil spirits. Shamans entering the trance is assisted by other shamans who lead them through all stages of the trance (intoning songs, singing together with shamans entering trance, passing or receiving the drum, accepting the spirit's blessing in their own names and in the name of local shamanists and controlling the behaviour of shamans in the trance). The fact that one of the shamans could not regain consciousness after entering the trance may be treated as an evidence for the depth of the trance entered by consecutive shamans. A
shaman that assisted her could not revive her for a couple of long minutes, even though the adherents were long gone and the singing had ceased.
The strictly obeyed unification of appearance and shamanistic attributes used by the Tengeri group raises some questions or doubts that unfortunately could not be clarified during our study. After a whole day of multiple trances, the shamans were on the verge of exhaustion, interviewing them at that time was out of the question. However, in a time of various self-appointed 'shamans' that have nothing in common with the real religion, the Tengeri organisation provides spectators with the certainty that they are watching shamans that know their art.
Figure 9: A shaman blessing one of his adherents (photo A. Wierucka)
As far as the shamanists are concerned, they took an active part in the ritual. The fact may serve as the best recommendation for the ceremony. During the shamans' trance, the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages accepted blessings of the spirits, asked for guidance and healing and offered their own offerings: they poured milk and vodka, threw sweets and bread in the air and bowed three times to all four directions of the world. This was one of few moments when these people appeared not only to be proud of their faith, but also they were keen to manifest it without any constraints - one of a few real, fully shamanistic moments.
Figure 10: Shamanists' offerings at the end of Tajlagan (photo A. Wierucka)
Shamans of the villages
There are only few villages on Olkhon Island. The study was conducted in Khuzhir, Maly Khuzhir, Yalga and Kharantsy. The main village of the island, Khuzhir, is deprived of its shaman, or at least there is no shaman that looks after common people, i.e. one who would heal them, advise them or foretell their future. In general, it is quite difficult to find a shaman on Olkhon. As mentioned earlier, most people refuse to talk about them. Sometimes, if someone is relaxed by a morning dose of alcohol, we could get some information about a shaman living at the peripheries in a small wooden hut with characteristic Siberian blue window shutters. Some people closed their door when they saw us; other allowed us to ask them some questions. We lack concrete data about the village shamans simply because they are hard to find. They do not look for fame, they do not wear blue clothes, and very often they do not use hats with horns. A drum is the only attribute they use, and it is kept in a non-evident place. Nevertheless, they act for the benefit of local communities, they undo harms done by evil ghosts, they ask for the assistance of benevolent spirits, they sing songs, bless the adherents, conduct offering ceremonies, mark places of power, of which Olkhon Island is full. Moreover, they are the only people in the area that can speak Buryat language. For sure, on the terrains south of Baikal, where there are more Buryats, and there is less influence from Russian culture, such shamans (full time and not media-friendly, but everyday working shamans) might be easier to find.
Conclusions
Shamanistic practices have been conducted on Olkhon Island for centuries. As one of the most celebrated places for the Buryats, the island was a witness to numerous ceremonies and rituals, multiple offerings to the spirits, many examples of healing and help given to the adherents. Places of power are still visited not only by the shamanists, but also by the tourists attracted by the unquestionable magic of the island, its waters and rocks. People that have nothing to do with shamanism, meekly climb the twin rocks near the Khoboy Cape, because they are convinced that if they set their feet on one of them, in the future they will have sons, while if they step on the other they will have daughters. Laughter and jokes are full of respect for local places of power. Many of them are covered with legends of wise, courageous people, whose deeds made this land holy and remembered for generations.
As we mentioned earlier, modern Olkhon shamanism is divided due to its specific relation with the media. One group includes shamans who in various ways are present in the media, e.g. in movies, the world wide web, books or radio broadcasts. The second group comprises organised shamans, whose activities are visible, who are visited by journalists and who are easily recognisable due to their blue clothes. And finally, the third group, shamans that not only cannot be seen, but who do not want to be noticed and who conduct their practice in small villages. Obviously, it is difficult to state which of those groups is the most important. Certainly such a statement makes no sense, because perhaps all these forms of activities are needed. Surely, however, the observed division into groups is a proof for profound changes that underwent not only within the shamanism of this very region, but also within the mentality of people. Much irreversible harm was done to Buryat culture by Soviet administration. Moreover, the influence of modern, rapidly changing world demands a greater attractiveness and spectacularity of shamanistic activity. Perhaps the practices of shaman Khagdaev and Tengeri shamans partially correspond to those demands. They probably personify an answer to the requirements of the outer world, requirements that became more and more palpable even in such remote areas. However, some questions remained unanswered. Is the direction taken by those shamans appropriate, would the media attractiveness bring other benefits than making people of other religions aware of the rules of shamanism? Is the work among the people that can trust their shaman with their problems the only proper path towards the preservation of faith and supporting the generational continuity of shamanism? This question must wait few years, when we will be able to determine the shape of shamanistic practice, the shamans' fate and whether or not the shamanists will still use their services.
References
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Society. In: Nicolas Thomas and Caroline Humprey (eds.), Shamanism, History & The State. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 76-89. Hoppal, Mihaly. 2007. Shamans and Traditions. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.
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Povzetek
Burjati živijo v Sibiriji. Njihovi običaji se hitro spreminjajo, a na nekaterih področjih je njihova tradicionalna religija, šamanizem, preživela. Čeprav je pod vplivom globalizacije, še vedno ohranja dokaj močan položaj. Na otoku Olkhon na Bajkalskem jezeru najdemo različne šamanistične prakse. Te prakse obstajajo kot odziv na potrebe lokalnih ljudi in na zahteve sodobnega sveta. Na podlagi terenskega dela, izvedenega v letu 2010, se članek osredotoča na tri oblike poklicnega šamanizma: prvi je predvsem za turiste, druga poteka prek organizacije šamanov; tretjega pa prakticirajo v majhnih vaseh. Vse te oblike kažejo na raznolikost sodobnega šamanizma, ki se spreminja in išče svoje mesto v kompleksni realnosti.
KLJUČNE BESEDE: Burjatski šamanizem, šamanistične prakse, avtohtoni prebivalci Sibirije
CORRESPONDENCE: ALEKSANDRA WIERUCKA, Department for Cultural Studies, University of Gdansk, ul. Grunwaldzka 238a, 80-266 Gdansk, Poland. E-mail: aleksandra.wierucka@wp.pl.
RESEARCH NOTES
The ACDSi 2013 - The Analysis of Children's Development in Slovenia 2013: Study protocol
Gregor Jurak
University of Ljubljana, gregor.jurak@fsp.uni-lj.si
Marjeta Kovac
University of Ljubljana, marjeta.kovac@fsp.uni-lj.si
Gregor Starc
University of Ljubljana, gregor.starc@fsp.uni-lj.si
Abstract
The ACDSi 2013 study is a continuation of a 40-year old decennial study on children's biological, psychological and social development. From its beginnings in 1970, the study has been characterised as an interdisciplinary study of physical anthropology, kinesiol-ogy, psychology and sociology, but in its fifth cycle, in 2013, its focus was expanded to include paediatrics and public health. The aim of the study is to follow secular trends of the somatic and motor development of children regarding the psychological, social and health determinants that shape contemporary children's lifestyles. The paper describes the protocol of the ACDSi 2013 study with regards to its organisation, sampling and methods.
KEYWORDS: children, somatic development, motor development, physical fitness, protocol
Background
Over the previous twenty years, rapid changes of children's and adolescents' lifestyles have been observed worldwide. These changes are induced by changes in the social and physical environment that directly influence the somatic and motor development of children and adolescents (Ferreira et al. 2007). Increasingly passive lifestyles among young people in developed countries have been observed (Armstrong 2007; Ferreira et al. 2007; Strel, Kovac & Jurak 2007), leading to increased life-style disorders in childhood. Therefore, studies of secular changes in physical fitness and the body composition of children and adolescents have become common. Most of these studies define physical fitness as cardiorespiratory fitness along with other health- and skill-related fitness components, such as endurance, strength and flexibility.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTEBOOKS 19 (3): 123-143. ISSN 1408-032X
© Slovene Anthropological Society 2013
Studies of secular changes show that changes in the lifestyles of children and adolescents in developed countries result in increased subcutaneous fat (Olds, Ridley, and Tomkinson 2007; Strel, Kovač & Jurak 2007), in a higher proportion of the overweight population (Hills, Andersen, and Byrne 2011; Ogden & Freedman 2012; Wijnhoven et al. 2013) and in the deterioration of their motor performance, particularly endurance and strength (Froberg & Andersen 2010; Rychtecky 2007; Strel, Kovač & Jurak 2007; Tomkinson & Olds 2007; Westerstahl, Barnekow-Bergkvist & Jansson 2005). Olds, Ridley and Tomkinson (2007) established that increases in fatness alone explain about a half of the observed decline in aerobic fitness performance. To conclude, contemporary children are thought to be at increasing risk for cardiovascular disease and other morbidities, since low physical fitness is significantly associated with the higher prevalence of numerous health risk factors (Williams 2001).
However, most of studies of secular trends have made only informal secular comparisons, with narrow age bands, single fitness components and only occasionally rigorous statistical treatment (Tomkinson & Olds 2007). Our intention was to surpass some of the limitations of the existing studies and include a wide age band, multiple fitness components as well as a rigorous methodological and statistical treatment. Our intention was also to revive the Slovenian physical anthropology in an interdisciplinary manner, by linking it to kinesiology, paediatrics and public health.
The roots of the ACDSi 2013
In 1970, the Faculty of Sport of the University of Ljubljana started a research project focusing on developmental trends of motor performance and physical characteristics of primary school children in Slovenia (Šturm 1972). Originally it was titled Comparison of certain motor and morphological parameters in primary schools in Slovenia, which was changed into the awkwardly long title Analysis of Developmental trends of motor abilities and physical characteristics, and their relations with other spaces of psycho-motor status of Slovenian children and youth between 7 and 14 years of age. The research project has been repeated four times since 1970; first in 1983 (Šturm and Strel 1985) and every decade afterwards, in 1993/94 (Strel et al. 1996), 2003/04 (Kovač, Starc & Bučar Pajek 2004) and 2013. In the 1993/94 cycle, the high-school population between 15 and 18 years of age was added. In this sense, our cross-sectional study is one of the longest running studies on children's bio-psycho-social development in the world. In 2013, it was renamed as The Analysis of Children's Development in Slovenia (ACDSi). In 2013, the study focused on children aged 6 to 14, and in 2014 our focus will be on 15 to 18 year-olds.
The first round, in 1970, included a nationally representative sample. The sample was selected using a multistage, stratified sampling design. Ten research project sites were selected according to four types of settlements (from rural to rural-industrial, industrial-rural and industrial) and according to regions. In each site, one primary school was selected, except in the capital where additional school was added in 1993 in order to meet the population representation criteria. In 1994, the sample was expanded and included adolescents (ages 15 to 18). Participants from six high schools of different
educational programmes in three project sites were added to the national representative sample. Thereafter, a sample of every research cycle (two consecutive years, first year on elementary and second year on high school students) has included around 5,500 children and adolescents aged 7 to 18 years (around 2% of the entire population). Due to changes in the educational system in Slovenia and the consequently earlier entry into primary school, the 2013 sample included also 6- and even 5-year-old children. Each age and sex group included around 200 participants (Table 1).
Table 1: ACDSi sample in different study cycles
Year of study	Principal investigators	Sample age	Sample size
		span (years)	
1970	Šturm, J.	7-14	3,272
1983	Šturm, J. & Strel, J.	7-14	3,163
1993/94	Strel, J., Sturm, J. & Kovač, M.	7-14	3,488
		15-18	1,620
2003/04	Strel, J., Kovač, M., Starc, G.,	7-18	4,095
	Jurak, G.	15-18	1,694
2013/14	Starc, G., Jurak, G., Kovač, M.	6-18	3,478
The scope of research also changed somewhat over time. At the beginning, researchers were oriented towards physical fitness and physical anthropology. Valid and reliable tests that were used mainly in the former Yugoslavia and some eastern European countries were chosen (Sturm 1970, 1977; Strel et al. 1988). In 1993, some new motor tests from the Eurofit test battery (CDDS 1983) were added. The study also started to focus on correlations of somatic development with their motor, functional, conative and cognitive dimensions, and dimensions of social status and environment, which determine health and quality of life. Despite somewhat different data collection methods in different cycles of the transversal research, our dataset consists of more than 25 anthropometric variables, more than 14 motor and aerobic fitness variables (covering the majority of tests from Eurofit and other test batteries) and variables from other research areas (psychology, social economic status, parents' opinion about physical activity), which can be used for comparisons of secular trends between different cycles. Unfortunately, the data from 1970 were lost in a fire, which allows only for comparisons of summary data, published in the 1970 study report. The contents of the 2013 dataset are described in Figure 1.
Organisation of the ACDSi
The leading institution of the study is Faculty of Sport, University of Ljubljana, where all principal investigators are employed. Current research activities are carried out within the Laboratory for the Diagnostics of Physical and Motor Development of Children and Youth. The principal investigators are responsible for the entire management of the study from its concept, contacts with partner organisations, organisation of work, funding assurance, implementation, and evaluation of data.
Due to the current unfortunate socio-economic situation (austerity measures due to the economic crisis in the private and public sectors, the position of anthropological kinesiology in the Slovenian academia, etc.) we were faced with extremely low public funding, which forced us to organise the last cycle of study differently in comparison to previous ones. All research activities have been carried out as unpaid volunteer work. The limited human and financial resources and multidisciplinary goals made us look for possible research partners from other faculties of the University of Ljubljana, from other research institutions in Slovenia and from the Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Zagreb, Croatia. Many researchers were asked to participate as volunteers in the construction of area-specific research instruments, in measurements and in the analysis of the data. Amazingly, all the contacted researchers agreed to participate in the research pro bono. During the development of our research instruments, a number of experts from around the world were asked for advice; all of them kindly provided some truly useful advice and also offered their help in the analysis of the gathered data. In a joint effort, a rational set of research instruments has been assembled, and all the required measuring technology as well as human sources have been provided. Students form the Faculty of Sport, Biotechnical Faculty, Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Pedagogy and Faculty of Social Sciences also volunteered. During each testing session in individual schools, 20 to 25 student investigators participated.
All the student investigators were trained in June 2013 and in greater detail a week before the measurements started. They all had previous study experiences in anthropometric measurements and motor testing. During the training, all measuring procedures were performed several times to ensure that all the student investigators were familiar with all tests and protocols to which they were assigned. The research team was divided into three groups: the anthropometric group worked on the anthropometric measurements in a small gym or a classroom; the largest motor group worked on the motor tests measurements in the gym and outdoors, and the smallest questionnaire group worked on the web questionnaires in school computer rooms. All the members and advisors of the research team are acknowledged in Table 2.
Table 2: The research team of the 2013 study cycle Research team members, their affiliations and their role in the study
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Sport Gregor Starc, Ph.D., principal investigator Gregor Jurak, Ph.D., principal investigator Prof. Marjeta Kovač, Ph.D., principal investigator Maja Bučar Pajek, Ph.D., investigator Bojan Leskošek, Ph.D., investigator Dorica Šajber, Ph.D., investigator Petra Zaletel, Ph.D., investigator Maja Ulaga, Ph.D., investigator Stanislav Pinter, Ph.D., investigator Prof. Vojko Strojnik, Ph.D., investigator Vedran Hadžic, M.D., investigator Bernarda Baron, student investigator Sebastjan Bauer, student investigator Žan Bedenik, student investigator Luka Dobovičnik, student investigator Jaka Došler, student investigator Rebeka Fink, student investigator Petra Grmovšek, student investigator Barbara Jantol, student investigator Nuša Jarc, student investigator Mateja Kragelj, student investigator Brigita Mardjonovic, student investigator Alja Markič, student investigator Gregor Mišič, student investigator Monika Morato, student investigator Boris Mujovic, student investigator Teja Papič, student investigator Darja Petek, student investigator Ajda Pristavec, student investigator Maruša Pungartnik, student investigator Tina Ribič, student investigator Petra Sluga, student investigator Maja Sušin, student investigator Rok Tomazin, student investigator Aljaž Igor Topole, student investigator Tadej Verbošt, student investigator Tina Zdešar, student investigator Aljaž Železnik, student investigator
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Education Tjaša Filipčič, Ph.D., investigator Franjo Krpač, Ph.D., investigator Katarina Bošnjak, student investigator Tina Korošec, student investigator Katja Rožman, student investigator Ana Tatalovic, student investigator Vida Biščak, investigator
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts Prof. Darja Kobal Grum, Ph.D., investigator Manca Seničar, graduate student investigator
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Kinesiology
•	Maroje Soric, Ph.D., M.D., investigator
•	Prof. Marjeta Mišigoj Durakovic, Ph.D., M.D., investigator
University of Ljubljana, Biotechnical Faculty
•	Petra Golja, Ph.D., investigator
•	Katja Zdešar Kotnik, investigator
•	Tatjana Robič, investigator
•	Prof. Marko Kreft, Ph.D., advisor
•	Monika Bitežnik, student investigator
•	Barbara Dekleva, student investigator
•	Ana Fortič, student investigator
•	Tanja Gačnik, student investigator
•	Mojca Gyorek, student investigator
•	Marko Ilic, student investigator
•	Eva Kocjan, student investigator
•	Tina Malus, student investigator
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Medicine
•	Lijana Zaletel-Kragelj, Ph.D., M.D., investigator
•	Janet Klara Djomba, M.D., investigator
•	Mojca Juričič, M.D., investigator
•	Andreja Kukec, investigator
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences
•	Vika Kuferšin Pušnik, investigator
Institute of Public Health
•	Mojca Gabrijelčič Blenkuš, Ph.D., M.D., investigator
•	Matej Gregorič, M.A., investigator
•	Vida Fajdiga Turk, investigator University Medical Centre Ljubljana
•	Jernej Pajek, Ph.D., M.D., investigator College of Nursing Jesenice
•	Joca Zurc, Ph.D., investigator
Fitlab, Institute for Holistic Approach to Sport and Treatment of Sport Injuries
•	Prof. Janko Strel, Ph.D., investigator
Grammar School Bežigrad
•	Rok Tomazin, student investigator
University of South Australia, School of Health Sciences
•	Grant R. Tomkinson, Ph.D., advisor
•	Prof. Timothy Olds, Ph.D., advisor
Loughborough University School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
•	Lauren B. Sherar, Ph.D., advisor
University of Bristol, Centre for Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences
•	Prof. Ashley Cooper, Ph.D., advisor
University of Waterloo, Faculty of Applied Health Sciences
•	Dana Zummach, advisor
According to our mutual agreement, the gathered data is owned by all the researchers and the database is managed by the project leaders. The compiled database with all the measurements and premise description of protocols will be accessible upon request on our web site (www.acd.si) and will be available to the international research community for comparison and analyses.
Methods
Main objectives and areas of interest
The purpose of the 2013 study cycle was to establish the somatic and motor development of the contemporary generation of primary-school children in Slovenia through specific research objectives: a) to establish contemporary children's lifestyles and their predictors, b) to establish the levels of physical fitness and body composition of contemporary children and set the national standards of somatic and motor development, and c) to quantify the secular changes in physical fitness of Slovenian children in the previous 40 years and to compare these changes to the available international data. The main areas of interest of the study were, therefore: body composition, motor performance, aerobic fitness, self-concept and motivation for physical activity, physical activity and sedentary behaviour, social and physical environment, and health.
The study was constructed to adhere to descriptive and predictive level of children's somatic and motor development. A list of more detailed descriptive research goals includes:
•	socioeconomic environment of children;
•	somatic development of children; national charts of growth, weight, BMI, hip-to-waist circumferences, different skinfolds, and body fat, developmental so-matochart, the contemporary trends of physical maturation, the anthropometric characteristics of contemporary children;
•	motor development of children; national charts of aerobic fitness and different physical fitness tests;
•	secular changes in physical fitness and anthropometric characteristics of contemporary Slovenian children with data from 10, 20, 30 and 40 years ago and a comparison of these changes to those of their peers from other countries;
•	shifts in the distributions of physical fitness performance over past 40 years;
•	changes in biological maturation, body size and body shape over past 40 years;
•	health habits of children (daily physical and other activities, commuting to school, screen time, food habits, smoking);
•	active commuting to and from school index;
•	sporting activity of children (frequency, organisational form, sport disciplines);
•	health of children (self-perception, health problems);
•	attitudes of parents about physical activity of their children (their support for sporting activity of child, their opinion about the importance of physical education);
•	physical activity level of children, their sedentary behaviour and energy expenditure;
•	characteristics of sleep of children;
•	psychological attitudes for physical activity in children (motives and self-concept).
In addition to descriptive research goals, we also set some prediction goals:
•	the influence of the socioeconomic baseline profile and home environment attributes on outcomes, such as motor performance, aerobic fitness, overweight and obesity, physical activity/inactivity habits, body composition;
•	the influence of sleep on physical activity levels and sedentary behaviour of children;
•	biological maturation as a predictor of physical fitness of children;
•	physical fitness as a predictor for body composition, health, self-concept, academic achievements;
•	health risks in children, in relation to overweight and obesity, level and type of physical activity, aerobic fitness and general physical performance;
•	physical activity habits and physical fitness in relation to motives for physical activities and self-concept;
•	health habits of children, such as daily physical and other activities, commuting to school, screen-time, food habits, and smoking, in relation to energy expenditure, physical fitness and body fat.
Ethics approval and ethical considerations
Approval of the National Medical Ethics Committee was obtained in June 2013 (ID 138/05/13). We visited all the schools, informed them about the research project and asked them to participate in the study. Having fully informed the children and their parents about the aims of the study and its protocol, written consents were obtained from the parents or legal guardians of all participating children. Participation of children was voluntary, and they could withdraw from the whole study or from any part of it at any time. None of the tests were in any way dangerous, and no risks were associated with any of the tests.
The compiled database does not include any personal identification, and the identity codes of the participants are kept separately and securely. All reporting of data will be anonymous. Schools, parents and children are kept informed of the progress of the study through our web pages and the personal presentations of findings on their schools.
Study design
The ACDSi is a cross-sectional, sentinel sites study that includes 11 primary schools and has been carried out every 10 years. In order to fulfil our research goals, we planned to include 3,600 children with 200 in each age- and sex-group. According to our experiences in previous study cycles, we estimated a 15% drop-out rate; hence, we sampled out 4,236 children.
Measurement site setting
The school principals and local mayors were first contacted about a year before the start of the study, and we asked the principals for their consent to include their schools in the study. We then visited each school to explain the details and arranged the coordination of activities in each school. All the schools agreed to participate in the study. Six months before the measurements, we set the exact dates of measurements and the schools integrated the measure-
ments in their yearly work plans. A month before the measurements, the schools received precise organisational instructions and the measurement schedule for each class. A few days before the measurements, we finalised the organisational specifics with each school.
In every school, one of the physical education teachers was assigned to serve as a coordinator. The coordinators helped with the distribution and gathering of consent forms and parents' questionnaires, with informing other teachers and personnel in school about the goals and organisation of the measurements, with setting up the measurement schedule, with making reservations of required facilities, with arranging the meals for the measuring team and the meal schedule for the measured children, and with arranging sleeping facilities for the measuring team, if required. Coordinators were in the constant contact with the principal investigators and were informed in detail about the operational level of the study. Half of the coordinators had previous experiences because they had already served as coordinators in the previous cycles of the study.
Sample
The primary sampling unit was schools and the secondary unit was the classes within each school. We acquired the numbers of classes and pupils in each school from the Information System of Number of Pupils in Slovenia. The numbers of pupils from every school was set according to the size of settlement; the ratio of pupils from each location corresponded to the ratio of inhabitants of Slovenia, coming from the same types of settlements (according to the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia's data). In this way, we assured also national representativeness according to the sizes and types of settlements in which the schools are located.
We then randomly selected the required number of classes from different school years. If the number of pupils from selected classes in an individual school did not correspond to the required number, we randomly selected pupils from other classes of the same schooling year. After the required number of pupils from each school was set, the consent forms were distributed to their parents.
Invited participants N= 4,236
Measured - anthropometry, motor tests, questionnaires N= 3,476
Parents' questionnaires N= 3,050
Figure 1: Flow chart of the ACDSi 2013 study
All parents of the sampled children were asked to sign the consent form about the participation of their children in the study. Each parent also received a description of the study and was instructed to check the details of the study on the Slovenian web page of the study (www.arto.si). Parents were also instructed to contact one of the principal investigators if they needed any additional information. Since the first response rate in some schools was unsatisfactory, we sent additional consent forms to parents. Some children who had consent (the consent rate was 87.7%) were not present on the days of the measurements, were injured, or were not sufficiently healthy to participate. Overall, 3,476 children completed all motor tests and anthropometric measurements, which is 82.1% of all children who were originally sampled, and represents around 2% of the entire population of children aged between 6 and 14 in Slovenia in 2013.
Table 3: The ACDSi 2013 study sample by sex and age
Age*	Boys	Girls	All
5 y	54	62	116
6 y	234	248	482
7 y	217	221	438
8 y	210	206	416
9 y	169	192	361
10 y	177	170	347
11 y	197	193	390
12 y	163	136	299
13 y	182	162	344
14 y	162	115	277
15 y	4	2	6
All	1,769	1,707	3,476
*Age is truncated to integer, e.g. 6.0 to 6.9 is 6
Children from grades 7 to 9 were asked to fill in web questionnaires, and the parents of younger children were asked to fill in the paper versions of similar questionnaires. The return of the questionnaires from parents proved to be a difficult task; after a few interventions we ended up with 3,050 completed questionnaires (87.7% of all measured children). A subsample of 11-year-olds from all schools was also asked to participate in a physical activity study and wore the SenseWear Armband during three weekdays and during the weekend.
Main methods of data collection
All of the tests and protocols utilised in the ACDSi are standard procedures and have been well validated for children of this age (see Table 4). Due to developmental divergence within the sample, different methods were sometimes used to collect the data for the same variables.
Table 4: Summary of the data collection undertaken in the ACDSi 2013
Method of data collection	Target group	Research area
Physical fitness examination: SLOFIT and EUROFIT protocols	Children 6-14 years	Aerobic fitness, Motor performance
Physical measures: standard anthropometric procedures	Children 6-14 years	Anthropometry, Blood pressure, Biological maturation
Web-based questionnaire: SHAPES physical activity questionnaire	Children 12-14 years	Physical activity habits, Sedentary activities, Social influences, Social-economic environment, Commuting to school
Web-based questionnaire	Children 11-14 years	Sporting activity, Health, Sleep, Academic achievements
Questionnaire: CLASS parental proxy questionnaire	Parents of children 6-11 years	Physical activity habits, Sedentary activities, Commuting to school, Social-economic environment, Parents attitude to physical activity
Questionnaire	Parents of children 12-14 years	Commuting to school, Social-economic environment, Parents attitude to physical activity
Multiple-sensor body monitors	Children 11 years	Physical activity levels, sedentary activities and energy expenditure, Sleep
Medical examination	Children 6, 8, 11 and 13 years	Health problems
Organisation and performance of testing
Motor testing, anthropometric measurements and questionnaire testing were carried out between September 6 and October 11, 2013. The measurements were organised between 8.00 and 14.00 and lasted two or three days, depending on each school's sample size. Each of the three groups was managed by a group leader, and the coordination between all three groups (anthropometry, motor testing and questionnaires) was managed by a measurement leader. All the measuring equipment that is not standard school gym equipment was brought to school by the research team. All testing equipment was routinely calibrated each day throughout the testing period. The web questionnaire for children was previously pilot-tested twice in a school not that was not included in the sample.
Every child was present for measurements on two days. On the first day of measurements, some children completed all anthropometric measurements and the multi-stage fitness test. The other part of the children at the same time completed the motor testing. Before or after these tests the older children (12 to 14 years) completed the web questionnaires. On the second day of the measurements, the two groups of children switched roles. Anthropometric
measurements were carried out in small gyms or classrooms with room temperatures between 20 and 24 °C. The motor testing was carried out in school gyms at the same temperatures and the running tests in schools' outdoor facilities when the temperature was above 10 °C, without rain and without wind. The web questionnaires were completed in schools' computer rooms with up to 22 children, segregated by sex. Several measurement waves per day were organised with between 60 to 80 children per wave (half of children went to anthropometry measurement and the other half to motor testing) and each wave lasted up to 90 minutes.
After the first day of measurements at individual schools, the parent questionnaire was handed out to every child with instructions to return it the next day. Younger children's parents (6 to 11 years) had to fill in a longer questionnaire, and the parents of older children (12 to 14 years) received a shorter one.
The physical activity measurements have been carried out from mid-September to mid-November 2013. The 11-year-old children wore SenseWear armband from Wednesday to Sunday, 24 hours a day.
The medical records of children will be obtained from school and family physicians in 2014 after the database of other measurements is completed and cleaned.
Physical fitness tests
Our concept of physical fitness is not restricted to the limited information provided by laboratory-based measures of peak aerobic power (Macfarlane 2001), but includes a variety of well-known field-based motor performance tests, for which a good lineage of our data from previous cycles of the ACDSi study exists. Therefore, the physical fitness tests were performed and scored using SLOFit (Strel et al. 1997) and EUROFIT protocols (CDDS 1983). Some tests from these two batteries have been adjusted to younger children. All testing protocols used have been tested on a sample of Slovenian population to validate their measuring characteristics, and they have been proved to be appropriate for use on the selected population (Sturm 1970, 1977). The measurements in the ACDSi 2013 included 17 physical fitness tests (Table 5).
The 20-s tapping test was performed on an electronic armplate (Elan, Begunje, Slovenia); handgrip strength was measured with a Jamar hydraulic hand dynamometer (Bolingbrook, IL, USA); heart rate was monitored with Polar F11 heart-rate monitors (Polar Electro, Kempele, Finland); while physical activity was measured with SenseWear Pro 2 and 3 armbands (BodyMedia, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, USA). The testing sessions began with brief (up to 10 min) light warm-up tasks. Subjects performed all the motor test barefoot (except 30, 60- and 600-m run tests) in their shorts and t-shirts. Before each test, a student investigator explained the execution of a test to a child. During the testing, the children were not additionally verbally encouraged. If a child failed to correctly perform a test, it had to be repeated. Energetically less demanding tests were repeated twice. The 60-s sit-ups and 60-metre run were performed only by children aged 12 to 14. Resting heart rates were documented 1 min, 2.5 min, and 5 min after the start of relaxed lying down.
Table 5: Measured items in ACDSi 2013
Physical fitness tests	Anthropometric measurements
•	20-s plate tapping test •	Standing broad jump •	20-s sit-ups test •	60-s sit-up test •	Polygon backwards test •	Sit and reach test •	Shoulder circuM.D.uction test •	20-s drumming test •	Flamingo balance test •	Flexed arm hang test •	Handgrip strength test •	30-m sprint test •	60-m sprint test •	600-m run test •	20-m shuttle run test with heart rate monitoring •	Resting heart rate test •	20-m multi stage fitness test	•	Self-reported height •	Self-reported weight •	Height •	Weight •	Sitting height •	Age at menarche (girls only) •	Shoulder breadth (biacromial) •	Pelvis breadth (biiliocristal and bispinal) •	Ankle breadth (bimalleolar) •	Femoral breadth (biepicondylar femur) •	Elbow breadth (biepicondylar humerus) •	Wrist breadth (lateral-medial stylion) •	Arm length (acromion-dactylion) •	Leg length (iliospinale) •	Foot length •	Triceps skinfold •	Biceps skinfold •	Suprailiac skinfold •	Supraspinal skinfold •	Subscapular skinfold •	Anterior thigh skinfold •	Medial calf skinfold •	Forearm circumference •	Mid-upper arm circumference relaxed •	Mid-upper arm circumference flexed •	Calf circumference (the widest part of calf) •	Gluteal thigh circumference •	Mid-thigh circumference •	Waist circumference (illiac crest) •	Hip circumference (the widest part of hips) •	Blood pressure
Physical activity	
•	5-day physical activity measurement •	SHAPES questionnaire •	CLASS questionnaire •	Geographic Information System	
Nutritional habits and smoking	
• School Fruit Scheme questionnaire	
Motivation and self-concept	
•	Pictorial motivation scale in physical activity •	SDQ I questionnaire	
Health status	
•	Kidscreen-10 questionnaire •	Medical records	Energy expenditure
	• 5-day energy expenditure measurement
Anthropometric measurements
During anthropometric measurements, children wore light clothes and their feet were bare. Only non-invasive standard anthropometric measurements were performed. Before the measurement of body height and body mass, children were asked to self-report their body height and body mass.
Height and lengths were measured to the nearest millimetre using a GPM 101 anthropometer (Siber & Hegner, Zurich, Switzerland). Body mass was measured to the nearest 100 grams using a portable Tanita BWB-800P electronic scale (Arlington Heights, IL, USA). The electronic scale was checked for accuracy every time it was moved. Anthropometric breadths were measured to the nearest mm by GPM 106 and 108 spreading callipers (Siber & Hegner, Zurich, Switzerland). Diameters, skinfolds and circumferences were measured on the right side of the body. Diameters were measured to the nearest millimetre using a Martin-type sliding calliper (Siber & Hegner, Zurich, Switzerland). Skin-
folds were measured to the nearest millimetre with Harpenden fat callipers (John Bull British Indicators Ltd., London, UK). Three measurements were taken at each measuring site. The mean value of the two closest measurements is to be used for analysis. Circumferences were measured once to the nearest millimetre with an GPM 11 anthropometric tape (Siber & Hegner, Zurich, Switzerland). In addition to anthropometric measurements, blood pressure was taken using an automated Omron M6 blood pressure machine and paediatric cuffs (Omron Healthcare Co., Ltd., Kyoto, Japan). Each child was introduced to the machine, the cuff was chosen and adjusted according to the size of child's arm, and then the child sat quietly and alone for at least two minutes prior to measurement. Resting systolic and diastolic blood pressure were measured in the sitting position using the child's left arm. Two measurements were then taken at three-minute intervals. The mean of the two measurements will be used for analysis.
Some anthropometric data and the data on biological age were also acquired via questionnaires; girls reported the date of their first menarche, and the parents reported their children's birth length, weight and gestational age, their own body height and weight and their own birth date. They were also asked to report on their children's height and weight.
Physical activity
The assessment of physical activity/inactivity patterns and correlates for physical activity of children aged 12 to 14 were made with the School Health Action, Planning and Evaluation System (SHAPES) physical activity questionnaire (1970). The original SHAPES physical activity questionnaire consisted of 45 multiple-choice questions presented in a four-page machine-readable booklet. We created a web-based questionnaire for our study; however, the outlook of the questionnaire remained identical to the original version. Two items require a seven-day recall of vigorous physical activity (VPA) and moderate physical activity (MPA), respectively. VPA was defined as 'jogging, team sports, fast dancing, jump-rope, and any other physical activities that increase your heart rate and make you breathe hard and sweat.' MPA was defined as 'lower intensity physical activities such as walking, biking to school, and recreational swimming.' Responses were provided by indicating the number of hours (0-4 h) and 15-min increments (0-45 min) that each type of physical activity was performed for each day of the previous week. Thus, intensity, duration, and frequency data are collected, and weekday versus weekend analyses are possible. In addition to the two core physical activity items, the items asked also about participation in physical activities (e.g., physical education, strength training, intramural sports, varsity sports, commuting to school), sedentary activities (e.g., watching television, playing video games, homework), social influences (e.g., peer and parental influences), self-perceptions of weight status and athletic ability. To original SHAPES physical activity questionnaire items about dog ownership in the family and social-economic environment were added; the latter included age, education, employment status, and the physical activity level of parents. The SHAPES physical activity questionnaire has acceptable reliability and validity (Adamo et al. 2009; Chinapaw et al. 2010; Wong, Leatherdale & Manske 2006), and it is suitable for use in large-scale school-based data collections for child and adolescent populations (Wong, Leatherdale & Manske 2006).
After it was translated to Slovenian and prior to our measurements, we tested it for reliability and validity at one of the schools not included in the sample, and established that it has acceptable validity and reliability.
For younger children, aged 6 to 11, the Children's Leisure Activities Study Survey (CLASS) printed version of a parental proxy questionnaire has been used for the same purpose (Telford et al. 2004). This questionnaire consists of an extended checklist of 30 physical activities. For each physical activity in the checklist, parents were asked to mark whether or not their child does that activity during a typical week (Monday to Friday) and during a typical weekend (Saturday and Sunday). A 'typical week' was defined as a usual week during the current school term, not including school holidays. If they circled 'yes', parents were asked to report the frequency of the activity (how many times Monday-Friday and Saturday-Sunday) and the total time their child spent in that activity (minutes or hours Monday-Friday and Saturday-Sunday). The CLASS proxy instrument had acceptable reliability, but less than desirable validity (Telford et al. 2004); however, it is still one of the best proxy physical activity questionnaires for children aged 6 to 12 (Adamo et al. 2009; Chinapaw et al. 2010).
In addition, the parents were asked about some of the specifics of the social-economic environment, such as other family members (number, sex and age), family budget and parents' age, employment status, occupation, education. They were also asked about their usual physical activity levels and their own attitude to physical education in comparison to other school subjects.
We also gathered information for analysis of commuting to school. We acquired home addresses for all the children and we asked older children and parents of younger children to describe the usual commuting of children to and from school and the reasons for their choices regarding this. Children's home addresses will be linked to the Slovenian Geographic Information System (Kvamme et al. 1997), which is designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyse, manage, and present all types of geographical data. This system will be used to identify residential environmental risk factors (such as distance from home to school, type of residential area, traffic) for passive commuting to and from school.
Health status
Self-evaluation of health status was assessed in children aged 11 to 14 via the Kidscreen-10 questionnaire (Ravens-Sieberer et al. 2010). This tool proved to have sufficient validity but lower reliability; nevertheless it remains one of the simplest and most effective methods for establishing the general health in children. In addition to the questionnaire, we will use the Slovenian network of school physicians to obtain some information on children's health status from their regular medical examinations at ages 6, 8, 11 and 13 (chronic and acute illnesses, injuries, blood pressure, blood lipids, haemoglobin, blood sedimentation, sight, hearing, status of motor apparatus).
Nutritional habits and smoking
In order to obtain insight into children's lifestyles, we included a few questions on nutritional habits (breakfast consumption, frequency and contents of meals) and on possible
smoking habits, we used the School Fruit Scheme questionnaire for children, developed by the Slovenian Health Institute.1
Sleep quality
In order to assess sleep-related behaviours, we used the Pediatric Daytime Sleepiness Scale (Drake et al. 2003) with additional questions on the in-bed time and out-of-bed time during week days and weekends. We used SenseWear armbands to assess the quality of sleep on the subsample of 11-year-olds.
Motivation and self-concept
To examine the relationship between children's motivational regulations and their levels of leisure-time physical activity or inactivity, we used an adjusted Pictorial Motivation Scale in Physical Activity (Reid et al. 2009), which was originally designed to assess motivation in special needs children but has also been successfully used among children without disabilities (Reinboth, Oellingrath & Svendsen 2010).
We also used the SDQ I questionnaire (Marsh 1990; Marsh & Redmayne 1994; Marsh et al. 1994) to assess the self-concepts of the children. The questionnaire is based on the model of academic and non-academic components of self-conception (Shavelson, Hubner & Stanton 1976).
All the questionnaires for children from 12 years of age onward were web-based. When children came to the computer room, each child received a unique identification number that was used for login. After logging in, they started completing the questionnaire while the present investigators gave additional individual explanations if necessary.
Energy expenditure
The energy expenditure of children was assessed via multiple-sensor body monitors (SenseWear Pro armband, BodyMedia Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, USA) on the subsample of 11-year-olds. SenseWear armband device (SWA) are part of a new generation of monitors that combines accelerometry with other physiological signals and has contributed to progress in physical activity assessment (Corder et al. 2008). The monitors combine a two-axis accelerometer with heat flux, temperature and galvanic skin response sensors. These additional physiological data enable the SWA to detect and measure physical activity of the lower and upper body and to detect the change in energy expenditure associated with load carrying, change of grade and non-ambulatory physical activity, thus eliminating the drawbacks of physical activity assessment based only on accelerometer data (Fruin & Rankin 2004). Recent studies comparing the SWA with the doubly labelled water method have found that the former yields an accurate estimate of energy expenditure in both adults (St-Onge et al. 2007).
'Available on: http://www.shemasolskegasadja.si/uploads/datoteke/vprasalnik_ucenci.pdf.
Our research team distributed the multiple-sensor body monitors (the SWA body monitor) person-to-person at schools. Information about the SWA body monitors use was given to the children orally; the end of the information session, accelerometers were distributed. The SWA body monitor was attached to the back of the subject's upper right arm, over the triceps muscle, halfway between the acromion and olecranon processes. Children were instructed to wear the armbands during the entire day for five consecutive days (including three weekdays and both weekend days), except during bathing or other water activities. If children had to remove the armband monitors for any other reasons (sports competitions, swimming, etc.) they had to report it. In addition, children and parents received a brochure about using SWA body monitors, including instructions for children. Teachers were also informed about the procedure and were asked to remind children to wear the devices every day.
Data from all the sensors are averaged over one-minute periods, and these data were stored and subsequently downloaded to a computer. For the analysis of the SWA data, the most recent child-specific exercise algorithms were used (SenseWear Professional software version 6.1, BodyMedia Inc., Pittsburg, PA, USA). The outcome variables were total daily energy expenditure, active energy expenditure (>3 METs) and the duration of physical activity performed at various intensities. The intensity was described as metabolic equivalents (METs). Time spent in 3-5.9 METs was classified as moderate physical activity; time spent in 6-8.9 METs was classified as vigorous physical activity and time spent at or above 9 METs was classified as very vigorous physical activity. The thresholds of 3.0, 6.0 and 9.0 METs were selected as they estimate a walking pace of 4 km/h, a running pace of 7 and 10 kmh respectively (Arvidsson et al. 2007) and have been frequently used in defining physical activity intensity in children (Dencker & Andersen 2008, 2011; Pate et al. 1996; Trost et al. 2002; Riddoch et al. 1991; Sherar et al. 2011).
Statistical considerations Data treatment
All hard copy data were manually entered into a database and checked for transcription errors. All data were entered once and then checked for outliers. Different types of statistical analyses will be performed based on research questions and type of data. A significance level of 0.05 was chosen throughout the study for analyses.
Considerations in relation to clusters within the study sample
The ACDSi study is school-based, and it is therefore possible that there are more differences in children between schools than within individual schools (cluster effect). This means that specific statistical methods are needed that take this into account.
Multilevel analyses
Descriptive and simple bivariate analyses will be performed to describe the distribution of data and to establish simple associations between potential predictor variables and the relevant outcome variables. In addition, multilevel multivariate analysis will be performed.
Discussion and conclusion
This study has several strong points. It ensures the continuation of four decades of the monitoring of changes in somatic and motor development of children on a nationally representative sample. The ACDSi has many participants, making it possible to analyse a relatively large number of variables and covariates in multivariate analyses without exhausting the dataset. The study runs over a 40-year period (1970-1983-1993-20032013), which makes it possible to study secular trends in life-styles, life-style conditions and their impacts to somatic development of children. The study is unique in its holistic approach to the researched phenomena with classic as well as technologically advanced non-invasive measurements, which can be used in the large sample epidemiological studies. According to the published data, few other studies have gathered such comprehensive data on somatic and motor development, and environmental factors that influence them.
Specifically, the ACDSi 2013 intends to answer some of the important questions in the understanding of secular changes of somatic and motor development of children that lead to lifestyle disorders, such as obesity, poor motor competency, low aerobic fitness, etc. The study will therefore provide credible new information on many aspects concerning childhood fitness and somatic development. Based on fitness- and somatic development-tracking studies from childhood and adolescence into adulthood (Malina 2001; Starc & Strel 2011a), the study could also give some forecast of physical fitness of Slovenian population in the future and consequently the prevalence of childhood-based morbidities.
Further, the ACDSi 2013 will enable the establishment of some new national standards of different physical and motor characteristics in Slovenia. Such standards are also extremely rare on the international level. That is to say, international standards of quality somatic development of children, normally used in epidemiological research and paediatric practice, are based on the data of old samples from decades ago, which makes them relatively inappropriate for monitoring the developmental trends of contemporary children and youth. The comparisons of research studies show that contemporary children and youth have significantly different physical characteristics than their peers from decades ago, which is visible in the tempo of their physical growth, in their body composition and anthropometric dimensions. Existing international standards are also inadequate for application on samples that have not been included in the construction of those standards, and Slovenian data has thus far not been used for the development of any of such standards (Starc & Strel 2011b).
For the improvement of future epidemiological research of the somatic development of school children as well as for adequate diagnosis of their growth deficiencies in Slovenia, we would have to construct our nationally specific growth charts, height charts and a developmental somatograph. For the assessment of health risks, we would need also nationally specific BMI charts, waist-to-hip circumferences ratio charts and body fat charts. For diagnosing health-endangering lifestyles, we also need standardised energy values of food intake and physical activity, while in the area of kinesiology we need the criteria of physical maturation for diagnosing talented children for sport and for the individualisation of the learning process in school physical education. The problems in the area of standards of quality motor development are even greater because the international standards for the paediatric population are non-existent, since there is little consensus on the methodology
and indicators of quality of somatic development, and because (despite great efforts) most countries, except for Slovenia and South Korea have not succeeded in establishing national systems for the regular annual monitoring of children's physical fitness.
In addition, with this cycle of ACDSi, we are stepping forward in inter-disciplinary cooperation in research and also in action activities on physical anthropology in children. In Slovenia, we have a well-developed system of epidemiological monitoring and evaluation of physical fitness of children and youth (Strel et al. 1997) but a rather undeveloped system of epidemiological monitoring of their physical activity, growth patterns, nutritional habits and body composition. With this study, we are correcting this discrepancy, strongly influenced by the decline of the Slovenian physical anthropology in the previous 50 years and the lack of cooperation between kinesiology, paediatrics and public health. For the first time, researchers from other fields and national policy-makers are actively participating in the study. The research results will also be directly implemented in various study courses of the Faculty of Sport, Faculty of Biotechnology, Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Medicine.
Moreover, the strength of the study lies in its transparency and the dissemination of its results because the constructed database with all the measurements and precise descriptions of protocols will be accessible upon request on a special web site and will be available to the international research community for comparison and analyses.
An issue that needs careful consideration in the ACDSi study is the interpretation of data. When many analyses are performed, even if the study sample is large, spurious results are likely to occur. Therefore, unusual, single, or unexpected results will be carefully considered in relation to the profile of other results and their plausibility.
Nonetheless, the results obtained in this study are likely to have an impact on public health in relation to physical fitness in childhood and will enrich the data on national anthropometric data and restart the development of applicable physical anthropology in Slovenia. All national standards will be directly applicable in paediatric practice (diagnostics) as well as in sport training and pedagogical practice (planning and evaluation). At the same time, the results will serve the planning and implementation of public health politics (nutrition and physical activity politics).
Competing interests
None of the authors has any competing interests regarding the ACDSi study or this manuscript.
Acknowledgements
Limited non-specific funding has been provided by the Slovenian Research Agency within the research programme P5-0142 Bio-psycho-social context of kinesiology. The study received invaluable assistance from the Olympic Committee of Slovenia and Elan Inventa, a sporting equipment manufacturer and supplier. We would like to thank also our patrons who supported the study: the Slovenian Federation of Sport Teacher Associations, the Section for School and High-school Medicine at the Slovenian Medical Association, the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Slovenia, the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport of Slovenia, the Olympic Committee of Slovenia. The study could not have
been conducted without exceptional voluntary work of all investigators (students and researchers), school coordinators and principals, and without personal financial contribution of members of the research team to cover some study's costs.
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Povzetek
Študija ARTOS 2013 je nadaljevanje 40 let stare desetletne študije o biološkem, psihološkem in socialnem razvoju otrok. Od svojih začetkov v letu 1970 je bila raziskava izvajana kot interdisciplinarna študija fizične antropologije, kineziologije, psihologije in sociologije, v svojem petem ciklu v letu 2013 pa se je razširila še na pediatrijo in javno zdravje.Cilj študije je slediti sekularnim trendom telesnega in gibalnega razvoja otrok z vidika psiholoških, socialnih in zdravstvenih dejavnikov, ki oblikujejo sodobni življenjske sloge otrok.Članek opisuje protokol študije ARTOS 2013 v zvezi z njegovo organizacijo, vzorčenjem in metodami.
KLJUČNE BESEDE: otroci, telesni razvoj, gibalni razvoj, telesni fitnes, protokol
CORRESPONDENCE: GREGOR JURAK, Faculty of Sport, University of Ljubljana, Gortanova 22, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. E-mail: gregor.jurak@fsp.uni-lj.si.
BOOK REVIEWS
Brotherton, P. Sean. 2012. Revolutionary Medicine: Health and the Body in PostSoviet Cuba. Durham and London: Duke University Press. xxvii + 256 pp. Pb.: $24.95. ISBN: 9780822352051.
P. Sean Brotherton's monograph chronicles the transformation of the Cuban medical system and succeeds in bringing forth the nuances and contradictions of contemporary (post-1991) Cuban life while focusing on the health care system. For those like me, who have lived and worked in the post-Soviet context, the book has a certain sense of familiarity about it, from the dual economy that extends into health care to the subtleties of using strategic connections and bribes in order to obtain access to medical services. Brotherton shows that revolutionary medicine is a product many years in making, touted as 'free for all' but, in the end, a great example of the Cuba's complicated reality. The book is based on more than 10 years of intermittent fieldwork and hundreds of interviews with medical professionals and patients. This wealth of ethnographic material is channeled into a fluent analysis that makes it an exceptional read.
One need not be a Cuba expert to find this ethnography of value, as it provides a rich account of a medical system undergoing a post-Soviet transition. However, it is the specifically Cuban twists that help contextualise Cuba as one of the few nations with developing world economic indicators but first world medical statistics. Cuban citizens consider medical care to be one of their fundamental human rights. The previous ease of access to medical services has prepared Cubans to be highly adept in the Westernised biomedical realm, as they are familiar with its core beliefs and jargon, which enables them to possess what the author terms 'highly medicalised' bodies. It is exactly these bodies that Brotherton is interested in, and he puts the individual into the picture through what he describes as the genealogy of individual bodily practices.
Part I of the book addresses biopolitics in the periodo especial or the special period when, in the early 1990s due to the global geopolitical changes, Cuba was forced to form new political alliances and entered a severe period of hardship that extended into the medical sphere. Brotherton argues that it is specifically the realm of health care that will bear the lasting marks of the special period, as it is upon the bodies of Cuban citizens that these marks have been imprinted deepest. Brotherton illustrates the daily experiences of Cubans during this period with a wealth of ethnographic examples and effectively paints a picture of the distorted dual economy and, more subtly, of the social and political realms.
Brotherton is particularly successful in highlighting the changes to the Family Physicians Program, the institution of family physicians that was originally established in all neighborhoods to ensure public access to medical care, but which has since been diminished to offering advice on usage of prescription drugs that patients have obtained via other channels or have been shipped off to Venezuela in exchange for oil contracts. Cubans, therefore, view family physicians more and more as superfluous, and it is understandable why there is a shift towards self-medicalisation and an increased interest in alternative (non bio-medical) healing, both Cuban (such as Creyente, a spiritual practice that has historically been practiced in Cuba as well as herb gardens that even Cuban
physicians now sometimes cultivate in order to provide their patients with medicine) and foreign (such as acupuncture).
Part II of the monograph focuses on the social governmentality, public health and risk. It provides a historic overview of body-related public policies from 1902 until 1958, when the revolution took place. The period after the revolution is of particular interest to Brotherton, and he argues that the body was turned into a revolutionary battleground during this time by utilising a heavy artillery of ideology linking body health to the health of the revolution. Notably, Brotherton reveals how the state's actions turned into medicalised subjectivities on the individual level. The author provides a multi-faceted analysis of the above-mentioned Family Physician Program that was institutionalised in the 1980s and is widely credited with the success of the Cuban health care system, as reflected by improved health statistics in the areas of infant mortality and life expectancy, for example, despite the extremely harsh social and economic conditions of the early 1990s. Part II of the book also examines the public campaigns (preventative strategies), such as the campaign to fumigate all apartments against mosquitoes carrying dengue fever, which are still carried out in Cuba. This section also offers a glimpse into the controversial HIV education and prevention programs that have been described, alternatively, as prisons or spa vacations.
The well-known maxim We have to think like capitalists, but continue to be socialists is the title for Part III of the book, in which Brotherton poses the profound question of how many capitalist strategies can Cuba embrace while still remaining socialist. Here, Brotherton provides an account of two developments: the so-called New Health tourism in Cuba (which is consistent with the dual economy model in which those with access to convertible currency receive preferential health treatment) and the export of doctors abroad (most notably to Venezuela) in exchange for a preferential trade relationship. The author argues that the former has 'challenged the moral legitimacy of the socialist project, yet is necessary, on the ground, for the maintenance of the country's crumbling health and welfare system' (p. 165). I would argue that the latter has the same effect.
Botherton succeeds in showing that 'Cuba's health care system is an apt example through which to interrogate the broader social, political, and economic changes that characterise contemporary Cuban life' (p. 156). The monograph possesses a literary quality (i.e. it is highly descriptive and showcases wonderfully compelling stories), provides plenty of complementary visual material, and it reads well despite the theoretical depth. Overall, I would recommend Revolutionary Medicine: Health and the Body in Post-Soviet Cuba to anybody interested in the cultural aspects of the health care field and, in particular, the evolution of a health care system from one which is a state-managed to whatever would be the next stage, referred to in the book as post-Soviet in the case of Cuba. The book allows the reader a powerful glimpse into post-Soviet Cuban life through the medical lens as, after all, health care lies at the core of the human struggles.
KARINA VASILEVSKA
Riga Stradins University (Latvia)
Gupta, Akhil. 2012. Red Tape. Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India. Durham and London: Duke University Press. xiii + 368 pp. Pb.: $26.95. ISBN: 9780822351108.
The Indian state has seen remarkably high rates of economic growth in recent years, yet it continues to have the world's highest number of acutely poor people, defined by those who live on less than one dollar per day. In Red Tape, Akhil Gupta argues that such an outcome should be understood as the product of structural violence: a 'direct and culpable form of killing made possible by state policies and practices' (p. 5). Violence towards the poor is structural in the sense that it cannot be attributed to individual culpability of misdemeanour. It is normalised and rendered invisible through the workings of bureaucratic practice. Drawing on fieldwork in Uttar Pradesh in the early 1990s, Gupta seeks to disrupt the explanatory logic according to which the premature death of millions from preventable poverty 'does not constitute a scandal' (p. 18). Questioning accounts that would see enduring poverty as the inevitable outcome of Indian modernisation or a condition that will eventually be alleviated by the trickling-down of wealth, he shows that it should rather be seen as the outcome of a kind of institutionalised arbitrariness that is 'systematically produced by the very mechanisms that are supposed to ameliorate social suffering' (p. 24).
The core of the book is concerned with this production of arbitrary outcomes, and the theoretical implications of this dynamic for considerations of poverty, biopolitics, and development interventions. Empirically, the central chapters focus on corruption, bureaucratic writing, and the management of the population as critical sites for these politics of included exclusion (or, as the titles of Parts Two, Three and Four put it: Corruption, Inscription, Governmentality). Scholars familiar with Gupta's work on the everyday narratives of corruption and the discursive reproduction of the state in India will recognise parts of his published corpus in these middle chapters, as well as arguments developed in his earlier articles about the need to disaggregate the state, analytically and empirically. The innovation of the book comes in trying to link up this discussion of the state bureaucracy as it is encountered at the localised level with a theoretical discussion about the normalisation of the 'exception' in contemporary India. Drawing on Foucault's conception of biopolitics, and Agamben's reading of 'bare life', Gupta traces the mechanisms through which violence against the poor comes to be seen as something M«-exceptional: the necessary underside of rapid economic growth, for instance; or the outcome of petty corruption by low-level officials.
To do so, he follows the working of bureaucracy at its lowest administrative level where most poor Indians encounter 'the state': the block office, responsible in this case for administering around 30 development programmes. Gupta argues that corruption, inscription and governmentality serve to reproduce structural violence, not because of the individual lack of care (or rapaciousness, or laziness) of individual state agents, but through particular organisational modalities, such as the way entitlements are distributed; the highly prescriptive requirements for complaints to translate into files and hence to be taken seriously; or the way that welfare programmes intended to empower poor women
through employment reproduce inequalities by not paying their workers a living wage. Individual ethnographic vignettes provide a poignant demonstration of the way that poor people are rebuffed, denied recourse to justice, reprimanded, or outright cheated in their encounters with the state in the village. They also show how injustice is reproduced by the arbitrariness of reporting requirements and inspection regimes, which mean, for instance, that villages located near to a main road are more likely to receive promised nutritional supplements than those that are far away; or that statistics gathered on attendance at government-run aganwadi centres constitute a bureaucratic reality, rather than reflected real levels of use.
These examples highlight the value of posing as an empirical question the conditions under which the state comes to be experienced as a singularity that is 'over and above' society, rather than taking such singularity as a given. However, while the book is rich in evocative vignettes, the lack of sustained ethnography or political and temporal contextualisation means that the empirical material does not actually sustain the theoretical work that is demanded of it. Periodisations of India's recent past are vague, and the times and political contexts of research are largely written out of the ethnography. In the epilogue, which feels somewhat disjointed from the broader narrative of the book, the reader jumps from the focused concern with Mandi district in Uttar Pradesh in the early 1990s to the Naxelite movement in 2009, without a clear connection between the two. One effect of this is that decontextualisation is that the reader is given little sense of how—or when, under which circumstances—structural violence might motivate the politics of protest. Nor does it provide tools for understanding the enormous diversity in development outcomes across India's different states. There may be violence in the arbitrary outcomes of bureaucratic interventions, to be sure; but 'arbitrariness' as analytic does not help to make sense of the quite regular, systematic, and in some cases quite intentional discriminations that occur on the basis of class, gender, or caste. As a magnum opus of Gupta's recent scholarship, there is much in Red Tape that will be of value to scholars and students alike. There are particularly rich discussions of paperwork, forgery, and the workings of the bureaucratic file (the origins of the term 'red tape'). However, to me the book succeeds more for its powerful insights into the way that the state is India is encountered, imagined, mocked and reproduced through the everyday actions of its rural and small-town functionaries than it does in explaining the reproduction of extreme injustice in conditions of economic liberalisation.
MADELEINE REEVES
University of Manchester (United Kingdom)
Malefyt, Timothy De Waal and Robert J. Morais. 2012. Advertising and Anthropology: Ethnographic Practice and Cultural Perspectives. London, New York: Berg / Bloomsbury Publishing. 186pp. Pb.: £17.99. ISBN: 9780857852021.
Malefyt and Morais' work is one of a handful of books in recent years to show the non-academic, non-philanthropic applications of anthropological methods and knowledge. At the beginning of the book, they state their purpose and, despite covering a wide range of issues, they do not waver from it: 'This book is written by anthropologists for anthropologists and others who are interested in advertising and related industries such as marketing, marketing research, and design' (p. 3).
Both authors consider themselves what they term 'observer participants' rather than the classic anthropological 'participant observer'. At first, this distinction hardly seems necessary, but the explanation given by the authors is a revelation. They contend that what they do is more akin to pure participation and that they gain a more detailed, more in-depth knowledge because of subject immersion. They do an excellent job of referencing how traditional academic anthropologists are doing the same type of work in an outstanding example of methodological harmony in aspects of the field.
The book is divided into four parts: Introduction; Toward an Understanding of Advertising Agencies; Applying Anthropology in Advertising Agencies; and Conclusion. Each section is constructed of chapters that give solid, well-reasoned examples and insights based on the authors' unique experiences as both anthropologists and advertising professionals. This duality of backgrounds and experience is a central theme in the book. The authors at times specifically address the straddling of two worlds, one academic and the other corporate. Both highlight how they contribute to academic conferences and journals, but also maintain a portfolio of clients in their respective companies. This duality is of paramount importance for a few reasons. First, the methods that all anthropology students learned in college are critical to the activities described in the book, but there must be flexibility in methods given the restrictions of the corporate world. Companies do not have 12-24 months to dedicate to ethnographic fieldwork to support the development of an advertising campaign. The authors make a strong case for developing a skill set that includes ethnographic work, but also includes focus-group type methods, something unused for the most part in academic anthropology.
In considering other methods and highlighting the need for anthropologists to embrace new methods and refine older ones, there is a weakness in this book as it does not reference or discuss the work of some anthropologists who have already advocated and developed faster methods for academic fieldwork. This is an intriguing difference from earlier in the book, where the need for total immersion was referenced back to changes in academic field practice. In areas in which the authors address time and budget constraints in corporate work and the need to truncate ethnography and/or embrace alternate methods like the focus group, they fail to highlight the work of anthropologists like W. Penn Handwerker, whose Quick Ethnography: A Guide to Rapid Multi-method Research came out in 2001 and is a remarkable work with great relevance to the issues tackled in both advertising and business anthropology.
While this book is a substantial contribution to the field of applied anthropology, and each chapter gives valuable insights, perhaps the most important and engaging chapter seven, titled Advertising, Automobiles, and the Branding of Luxury. This chapter gives two excellent examples, both obviously involving automobiles, of a success and a failure in establishing a brand identity for a vehicle and how anthropology can be used to establish a successful campaign or repair a disastrous effort. This chapter is an excellent case study that could easily be the basis for a week's worth of class discussion and analysis.
Malefyt and Morais have made a significant contribution to applied anthropology with this work. Itjoins the works of others, like Jordan's Business Anthropology, in building the methods and reputation for anthropology in the non-academic arena. The authors highlight this early in the book, by exploring how in recent years jobs for anthropologists in private sector corporations have grown, while there is a distinct atrophy of positions in traditional academic environments. Malefyt and Morais are right to criticise that academic anthropologists are not informing students of the possibilities for non-academic employment. This reviewer believes that books like this one, coupled with courses built around the increasing volume of published applied anthropology books and articles, is the impetus needed to expose students to the non-academic applications of the field and to do what comes naturally to all anthropologists—study people no matter where they are.
DON ARP, JR.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln (USA)
Danforth, Loring M. and Riki Van Boeschoten. 2012. Children of the Greek Civil War. Refugees and the Politics of Memory. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. xv + 329 pp. Pb.: $25.00. ISBN: 9780226135991.
Over the last fifteen years, we have witnessed an unprecedented growth of studies on the Greek Civil War, bridging many gaps in the understanding of its social and political dimensions. The book Children of the Greek Civil War by Loring Danforth and Riki Van Boeschoten, can be credited for filling a serious gap of knowledge of a politically charged contentious point, of the Cold War period and beyond. In 1948, thirty-eight thousand children were evacuated from their villages in Northern Greece. The evacuation programs were organised by the Greek Communist Party, with relocation of children to orphanages in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, and by the Greek Government, which relocated them to children's home (better known aspaidopolis (children's cities)) elsewhere in Greece. The book, the outcome of a long-term collaborative research, provides the first comparative historical reconstruction of evacuation programs through the combination of 'unexplored archival sources' (p. 9) and first-hand oral narratives, and a perceptive analysis of the political dimension of the so-calledpaidomazoma (literally: abducting children) in the present, accomplished through a challenging multi-sited ethnography that brings into light the voices and representations of children refugees, the ways they organised their lives and their understanding of the past. Furthermore, the authors have succeeded in pointing out with unusual clarity some crucial theoretical and methodological issues of contemporary debate in anthropology: as interdisciplinary, 'cosmopolitan' ethnography, children's agency, to mention but a few.
The book is divided into three parts. Part One, Histories, provides an accurate historical reconstruction in comparative perspective of both evacuation programs of the Greek Communist Party and of the Greek government. The in-depth analysis reveals the evacuations to be much more problematic than pretended by official discourses (of both sides) constructed around reciprocal allegations of 'kidnapping' the children (the instrumental use of the term paidomazoma had a precise anti-national meaning as it referred to the dev§irme, the Ottoman practice of recruiting young Christians for the elite guard of the Sultan). The issue of 'coercion', as an example, is brought back to the complexities of factors and contexts in which the evacuations took place. Instead of relying on the strict alternatives between forced or voluntary evacuation, the authors point to a 'spectrum of coercion' (p. 8), that was also given by the precarious conditions of uncertainty defined by the conflict, in which people had to make their own choices. The contextualisation of the evacuation programs at the beginning of an 'international refugee regime' raises also relevant issues on the same birth of 'the refugee' as a recognisable figure, and the representation of 'displacement' as a fundamentally pathological status in the 'national order of things' (p. 187). The meaningfulness of this point is revealed by the repatriation issue and the different representation of 'home' outlined by the experiences of refugee children, with reference both to their individual trajectories and to the change of the geopolitical contexts in which they live, as the surfacing of ethnic tensions between Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia around the official name of the latter.
Departing from the 'traditional scholarly voice of social historians' of the previous section, Part Two, Stories, 'restore both agency and voice to the refugee children of the Greek Civil War' (p. 16). It contains seven life-history narratives, selected among many individual accounts in order to present a broad spectrum of life conditions and trajectories: individual accounts of refugee children in Greek children's home; refugee children relocated in Eastern Europe, some of whom were brought back as early as the 1950s, while others decide to return themselves after the fall of the military junta in 1970s; and refugee children who did not return or were not allowed to return. It is the case of Slavic-speaking children ('Macedonians' or 'Slavo-Macedonians'), who had come to develop a distinct identity from Greek-speaking children, later consolidated as a consequence of Greece's refusal of their repatriation and the post-Cold War situation in the region, that made their return 'impossible' (p. 197), practically and symbolically, and in fact turned their condition from 'refugee' to 'exiles' (pp. 8, 213). The changed context in which their returning 'home' (a never univocal concept) has become impossible fostered a retrospective ethnicisation of the Greek Civil War, a conflict which was essentially political, although frictions related to ethnicity were not absent.
In Part Three, Ethnographies, the authors explore the 'politics of memory' and their contexts in the present, combining thick descriptions of official gatherings and commemorations with theoretically grounded reflections on the specificity of the 'communities of memory' that are created from the sharing of common experiences ('experiential communities of memory') or from the sharing of ideological and political frameworks ('political communities of memory') (p. 225). In their 'multilocale' ethnography of transnational networks and transnational diaspora communities, the post-Cold War context comes to light as the main political and ideological framework for the production of memory of the Greek Civil War and of the refugee children's experiences. Mindful of the different layers of memory (individual, public, official etc.), of the dialectics between remembering and forgetting, the authors focus on the 'memory wars' that surround the contentious past of refugee children and the transnational settings in which nowadays they recur: from the transnational association of refugee children who identify themselves as Macedonians and are supported by the Republic of Macedonia, to the Greek-oriented Pan-Macedonian Association and the problematic memorialisation of the village Lia, in northwest Greece, birthplace of Nicholas Gage, author of well-known novel Eleni (1983).
Assuming Michael Herzfeld's distinctionbetween 'history in general' as an instrument of state ideology and 'histories' or 'stories' as fragments of social experience and intimate social knowledge, a main concern of the authors throughout the book is 'the way individual narratives deconstruct both collective narratives of nations and the ideological frameworks in which they exist' (p. 4). The way the authors deal with tensions between 'individual' and 'collective' narratives is strikingly balanced, thanks to a skilful combination of ethnographic styles and methodologies and, most of everything, to the empathy and intellectual honesty they disclose. Anything but rhetorical, in the concluding Epilogue, is the refugee children's plea for 'the value, the virtue, of remembering without rancor' (p. 225).
ANTONIO MARIA PUSCEDDU
University of Cagliari (Italy)
Weisbard, Eric (ed.). 2012. Pop When the World Falls Apart: Music in the Shadow of Doubt. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 329 pp. Pb.: $25.95. ISBN: 9780822351085.
The source of the collection Pop When the World Falls Apart is drawn on from the presentations at the annual Pop Conference at Experience Music Project. Since 2002, this has been bringing together different kinds of music writing: academics, musicians, critics, fans, music-enthusiasts etc. This particular book is shaped by the conference proceedings from 2006 to 2008 and its' crosscutting theme is the 'music in times of trouble: the role of pop at times when it seems that the world has fallen apart' (p. 3). Trouble is defined here widely: not only as an external phenomenon (i.e. wars, crises), but also as a part of our normal lives.
As multi-coloured as the pop music scene is, so too is this book. The articles and essays encompass inquiries from case studies of one musician/band to extensive studies about cultural/musical life. Most of them refer to pop music and the pop music scene in the US. A great advantage of this book, yet simultaneously a disadvantage, is the variety of the writing styles and genres of the essays, which shows the versatility of music criticism (as well as the versatility of people who writes about music). On one hand, it makes much more pleasure of reading to have academic writing pieces mixed up with journalism and literary impressions; on the other, some of the pieces remain in the unfavourable comparison.
Superficially, it looks like all eighteen essays, and articles are loosely linked or even ordered randomly, but according to the editor Eric Weisbard, the book is divided into five thematic sections.
The articles in the first section navigate to the turbulences of self. In the first essay of the book, Jonathan Lethem shows remarkably elegantly the physical acknowledging of pop music through dance. Greg Tate traces the history of Black Rock, Alexandra T. Vazquez exemplifies the idea of knowing nothing in the activity of music criticism and David Ritz demonstrates enthrallingly in his article why he became a ghost-writer, who has given voice to someone else (e.g. Ray Charles) while remaining in the background.
The common denominator to the second section is the setting place: Orange Country, California. In his article, Tom Smucker deals with the music in the 1970s: the Carpenters, Lawrence Welk and the Beach Boys. In the next article, by Eric Lott, Karen Carpenter is the theme, this time through the theoretical prism of Theodor Adorno. Karen Tongson explores the sociological and musical structure in the breakdance club Studio K at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park in the eighties, concerning race, identity, control, etc.
In my view (and maybe from the global or at least non-US viewpoint as well), the most valuable articles are in the third section, which shows how does pop music respond to massive troubles like war in Iraq (started in 2003) and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, US in 2005. This section is opened with an analysis by J. Martin Daughtry of the sonic dimension of the war in Iraq. Daughtry shows that people who live in conflict zones have evolved advanced listening skills to analyse the information from bellifonic sound in order to survive. However, these very sounds can both physically and
psychologically traumatise those who experience them. Through the analysis, as well as personal experiences by the service members of the Iraq conflict, the author shows that, through the sonic dimension of war, we can learn something general about listening. Larry Blumenfeld's article is about the jazz culture fighting for its life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Political and social statements are subjects for the next paper: Nate Chinen explores the coded context of the song Somewhere over the Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, which most listeners may not recognise.
In the penultimate section of the book, we can find four case studies dedicated to different music genres, including hip-hop, blues, retro-soul. In her article, Diane Pecknold shows how country-pop hit By the Time I Get to Phoenix interpreted by Isaac Hayes, later known as 'Black Moses', became a symbol of black cultural nationalism. The rise of retro-soul movement is given next in the book: Oliver Wang considers the movement both from musical and social aspects. Carlo Rotella's essay opens up Chicago blues scene and its last orthodox member, Magic Slim, who has not been influenced by other blues-related genres and is 'currently the strongest argument for Chicago blues as a living genre' (p. 230). The section closes elegantly with three monologues in the mode of documentary theatre based on interviews with Iowan hip-hop fans by Brian Goedde, Austin Bunn, and Elena Passarello.
The final section of the collection takes us to the world of punk and metal. Michelle Habell-Pallan provides an insight into the punk rocker Alice Bag's strongly Mexican influenced performance style in the Hollywood punk scene, particularly how Alice Bag flavoured the sound of punk with elements of cancion ranchera's vocal aesthetic, estilo bravio. In his article, Scott Seward examines the connections between folk music and extreme metal. At the very end, Kembrew McLeod writes about a media prank, which was born on the pages of Spin magazine in the 1990s in Virginia.
As a coda, the volume ends with an article about 'guilty displeasure' of hating Celine Dion by Carl Wilson, which also reflects a little the content of the book as well as the idea of Pop Conference in general.
Finally, the collection of papers Pop When the World Falls Apart serves an abundant source for those interested in pop music and culture, especially for understanding the versatility of pop culture as well as understanding the versatility of pop music criticism. Furthermore, there is undoubtedly much more to write about it than I have been able to express in short of this book review.
LIISI LAANEMETS
Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (Estonia)
Shepherd, Robert J. 2013. Faith in Heritage. Displacement, Development, and Religious Tourism in Contemporary China. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. 179 pp. Pb.: $34.95. ISBN: 9781611320749.
In his study Robert J. Shepherd analyses the process of heritage construction and its numerous actors and segments, giving examples of diverging and sometimes quite opposite voices, showing positive as well as negative meanings people ascribe to it. Instead of a self-understood term 'heritage' or perceiving it as a straightforward, agreed upon and positive construction, as we observe happens in public discourse, the author shows all its complexity, its multiple layers and ambivalence. The different positions of power or the lack of it that heterogeneous groups and individuals possess direct their actions and reactions in regard to the naming of the heritage: they either enable them to make decisions and ride the wave of beneficial circumstances or they demand that they use sly tricks and transform themselves into at least temporary winners or they turn them into victims of the decisions coming from local and state centres of power or distant centres of world organisations.
The author focuses his analysis on Wutai Shan (Mount Wutai), one of China's four sacred Buddhist mountains. In this area, which has been a Buddhist site since the fifth century, with the Communist Party rising to power in 1949, projects of heritage protection are starting to be developed (with the initial denial of the religious significance and in the last two decades gradually with greater religious freedoms, redefining Wutai Shan as an economic source of a relatively marginalised region and including it on different national and provincial lists), that culminated in the proclamation of Wutai Shan a national park in 2005 and receiving the status of a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2009. Wutai Shan currently has 47 functioning monasteries and temples, with nine temples being inscribed on the UNESCO list. Most of the approximately two million annual visitors are Chinese citizens, primarily of the Han nationality, while there are hardly any foreign visitors. The author builds the ground for his analysis by giving a highly informative and concise insight into UNESCO's most important documents and strategies. He also points to the contradictions they contain (e.g. insisting on variety and non-homogenisation, but at the same time relying on a particular set of values elevated to a universal level) and a shifting relationship to tourism. Special place is given to the questioning of the term 'world heritage', as a cornerstone of UNESCO's program, in relation to specific social, political, economic, religious and other realities of each separate locality on the UNESCO list. The author incorporates his specific research into the context of Chinese history and contemporaneity, from which he, with great expertise, extracts the most salient points, making thus possible the understanding of the political circumstances and the government's changes of attitude towards the concept of heritage (after the introduction of the neologism in 1982 as much as before that).
At the centre of his research stand the multiple meanings that various actors ascribe to the transformation of Wutai Shan into a UNESCO World Heritage site. Shepherd sheds light on the support and investment of the Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party for and into heritage programs, through which ideas of development
and modernisation are inscribed into Wutai Shan, making this locality part of an 'ongoing moral and spiritual campaign to shape Chinese citizens into proper modern subjects' (p. 68). Alongside these official state narratives, the author presents many other voices: those of the representatives of local government, official guides, licensed and unlicensed salesmen, local residents, monks and nuns, visitors, etc. In this way, he creates with extraordinary care an image of this place within a dynamic relationship between heritage, tourism and religious practices. The complex management of Wutai Shan on the state, provincial and municipal level, a whole array of laws and regulations and the various uses and meanings ascribed to it by the various users make this locality an unfinished story about UNESCO's program and its implementation in the Chinese context. 'Demarcation of space' (p. 37) and the plan to create a central zone free from commercial and residential functions (from 2005) make the sharpest cut into the living fabric of this space that the process of the construction of the world heritage site brought about (what is planned is the removal of 417 households with 1,309 residents from Taihuai and its surroundings and the demolition of 36 guesthouses and 108 shops). The displacement of residents from the Taihuai area, where most of the protected buildings are situated, into a planned housing complex 23 km away (designed for 1,857 households and 6,500 people), initiated at the end of 2007, physically inscribes new features into the landscape and speaks loudly about the contested points and problems, demonstrating what happens when strategic documents begin to take their shape in space and in people's lives: demolishing homes in Taihuai and unfinished planned green surfaces on site of previous houses, shops and farmland, uncertainty, questioning and resignation, non-transparency and corruption in distributing compensation money, building on top of existing buildings as an effort to enlarge those sums, the astounding emptiness of the newly built housing complex, various renovations and building of some religious objects and the neglect of others, etc.
Wutai Shan as 'the sacred space of the secular world heritage movement' (p. 118) and 'the sacred space of Buddhist aura and power' (p. 150), appears thus as a space of 'contested histories' and a space of 'exercise of power' (p. 119), an arena of diverse creations and recreations of landscape, different interests and tactics. At the end of his study, the author sees this variety as a promise of a possible dialogue, which could contribute to the recognition and acceptance of 'social landscape' and 'social vibrancy' of Wutai Shan (p. 152). Instead of demarcation and creation of 'clean' zones in which all former complexity and vibrancy are erased, the author suggests a need for a greater sensibility to concrete social reality, which would prevent the informing of the world heritage sites following the same principles and the suppressing of the variety that lies in the very foundation of UNESCO's agenda.
Shepherd's study is a remarkably analytical, detailed and inspiring representation of one concrete case of heritage construction. His knowledge of Chinese circumstances and multiple field research that allowed him gaining insight and meeting the actors of this process have created a text that is informative and which tries to represent equally a variety of voices. I find especially valuable the extracts of conversations with the local population and visitors and the vivid descriptions of field situations he found himself in. The author in this book gives strong examples of the fact that he also emphasises
that 'heritage programs, policies, and campaigns are inherently political' (p. 47). By discovering various layers and cracks in the narratives about heritage, Shepherd writes out the multiple aspects of 'faith in heritage', which (in my opinion) can be extremely motivating for those for whom heritage and its connection to tourism, religious practices, development policies, human rights, etc. are interesting in the sense of research, but also for those who live with and in heritage.
PETRA KELEMEN
University of Zagreb (Croatia)
Samson, Jim. 2013. Music in the Balkans. Leiden, Boston: Brill. xvi + 729 pp. Hb.: €157.00 / $218.00. ISBN: 9789004250376
A comparative music history of the Balkans, especially as seen in relation to political and cultural history, is a much-needed project. If such a history would ever be written, I thought, this would be a colossal editorial project based on the competence of specialists, grounded in a tight and equal collaboration between Western European and American scholars and their colleagues in South East Europe. Jim Samson, Emeritus Professor of Music, Royal Holloway at the University of London has undertaken this monumental effort alone, presenting a volume which embeds music history into the wider circles of cultural history.
The volume is a highly imaginative, often personally coloured account of music-making in the Balkans and its often contradictory meanings and appropriations - departing from Ivo Andric's evocation of epic gusle playing in The Bridge on the Drina to the contemporary DJ culture in Kosovo. The volume, which in its essence has an inclusive and encyclopaedic character, shows how difficult it is to cover all aspects of musical life in the Balkans with the same expertise: popular music, classical music and ethnomusicology have distinctively different weights in the volume. This nevertheless should not impede a scholar from embarking on such a project. A careful reading ofMusic in the Balkans reveals that at the core of the publication project stood the idea to rehabilitate (in particular) the role of classical music in the Balkans from the early folklorists and modernists in early 20th century to the present day. Around this well-informed and exciting music history, which offers as well new insights into the institutionalisation and nationalisation of musical practice since the 19th century, the chapters on popular music and ethnomusicological issues are built. These chapters are discussed from the perspective of a scholar who is primarily trained in historical musicology: resulting in a synergetic approach, based on extensive literature work enriched by first-hand experiences of colleagues. Nevertheless, the momentum of fieldwork and performance is underrepresented in this book. This is particularly regrettable as the performance, and the subsequent processes of negotiation and construction of musical meaning are essential for many of the arguments the author discusses in his book. In this sense, the volume discusses the impacts and effects of codified 'musical products' and not the processes which charge music-making with particular meanings. Nevertheless, Samson (who has travelled in the Balkans since the 1960s) takes us on a journey beyond disciplinary boundaries, transcending different historical periods and different musical traditions. The chapters on popular music follow the path paved by Buchanan (2007) reusing several tropes established in the field of Balkan music studies: the link between music and politics, the Ottoman period as a shared cultural heritage, and the hybridisation of musical practice in the previous two decades. He nevertheless modifies and enriches these arguments in highly innovative ways. Referring to the musical heritage of Ottoman times, he makes a point in depicting the musical adaption process as a reciprocal endeavour: there was not only the transplantation of 'Anatolian traditions to the Balkan soil' but vernacular traditions in the Balkans played as well a key role in the formation of Ottoman musical traditions. Nevertheless, it becomes clear that
this book is focusing primarily on the musical past of the Balkans, e.g. the processes of folklorisation and ideologisation during communism or the current changes in musical practices through heritage politics, although mentioned, are not discussed at length. The already existing volumes of Rice (1994), Buchanan (2006), and Hofman (2010) may have been a reason for this conscious exclusion.
The way musical history is constructed in this volume also shows that the author has felt the need to position oneself in relation to the recent debates in musicology concerning terms such as 'authenticity', 'collective identity' or the 'identity-generating meaning of place'. Generally, he takes up here a defensive stance: the relevance of place for the construction of musical meaning is indicative here. He argues for a continuing relevance of space-bound musical practice even if 'place' in postmodern times can become an attribute of music. A similar defensive position he takes in relation to the term 'collective identities', which he considers a valid research tool.
Throughout the book, several passages show the author's interest in enriching the musicological perspective through excursions into the realm of philosophy and literature: Confucius, Orhan Pamuk and Alain Badiou all make their appearance in the book. At times, this gives strong interdisciplinary impulses: introducing Badiou's 'human agency' into the context of Balkan music history pointing to the importance of cultural action within an occurring practice is such a positive example. At times, these cross-references are less convincing, however, and leave the reader puzzled, at times disturbed as they lead away from the main argument of the book. The final chapter dedicated to a more general reflection of 'progress and degeneration' is a striking example in this sense. Furthermore, political statements such as the author's concerns about the accession of Turkey to the European Union are barely in the right place in a book dedicated to cultural practice.
However, the highly innovative potential of this volume, searching for commonalities and not for differences in Balkan music history, cannot be valued enough. The extensive and complete list of references (mainly in Western European languages) on 31 pages is worth alone buying this book. The book will surely have a lasting and positive impact for all following studies on Balkan music for two reasons: firstly, the attempt to look beyond the East-West dichotomy as translated into music, and secondly, the visionary call for a denationalisation of music history.
ECKEHARD PISTRICK
Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (Germany)
Kapferer, Judith (ed.). 2012. Images of Power and the Power of Images. Control, Ownership and Public Space (Space and Place Series). New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books. vi + 155 pp. Pb.: $27.00 / 16.85. ISBN: 9780857455147.
As Judith Kapferer emphasises in the introduction to this volume, symbols of power surround us. These could be symbols of religious power (such as churches), or political power (governmental buildings), or economic power (shopping malls) - they are all concrete expressions of abstract conceptions. These images of power, according to Kapferer, control and own public space, but also dominate our beliefs in order of things. From different perspectives and with different case studies from all around the world, the authors of the chapters examine issues that are taken for granted. Even though, as Kapferer stresses, these symbolic manifestations of legitimated power that are achieved through artworks, architecture, town planning, landscaping, and performance, are easy to find, the problem, and the purpose of this volume in the same time is to unravel the shifting relations between image and reality.
The volume is opened with an editor's chapter in which she suggest that Enlightenment traditions of criticism, rationality, scepticism, and argumentations eroded throughout the twentieth century and have been replaced by material profit and Western acceptance of unequal economic power. She studied the Frieze Art Fair in London from 2006 to 2009, and explored the idea of a ruling class that supports the production, consumption and competition for art-work as a pursuit of financial profit and social status, and the abandonment of art workers' culture-debating role in favour of stock market quotations and journalists' opinion. Kapferer concludes that once critique bourgeois public sphere is overwhelmed with culture-consuming society of corporate directors, oligarch and celebrities (p. 23).
The first chapter is followed by section of chapters that, in a way, all discuss 'concrete'. Penelope Harvey examines the aesthetic of state power and concrete as the key material used for the demarcation and ordering of public space (p. 28). In her highly engaging research, she analyses the appeal of concrete, the values attached to it, and the forms that are built from it (p. 29). Harvey is primarily concerned with the role of concrete in the transformation of public space in provincial Peru and argues that concrete is a form of matter that has the potential for both social and material transformation (p. 42).
Miles Glendinning continues with this idea and gives a brief overview of mass housing projects (that also used concrete as a material). He starts with examples from around the world, and then focuses on a case study from Great Britain and the tensions between municipal and national state agencies, and also between professionals oriented toward production or design (p. 48).
As a highlight of this section and discussion of the practical and symbolic meaning of the concrete, Don Handelman analyses cityscape of divided Jerusalem and architectural forms that do not have physical relations to each other, but together, according to Handelman, they create 'vector of force' in which vector refers to a line in space that has both the magnitude and direction of a quantity (p. 61). These architectural forms are different in origin and function: from a bridge, new historical museum of Holocaust,
buildings, to 'separation barrier' between Palestinian East Jerusalem and its hinterland (p. 62). Handelman argues that all these constructions shape Jerusalem's cityscape and influence how the city is being shaped and practiced.
The next two chapters deal with the body as a material but also as an agent that interact and influence the world. Uli Linke opens this topic by analysing an exhibition on human anatomy designed by a German anatomist Gunther von Hagens. The corpses that are part of this exhibition are aestheticised to suppress any evocations of violence, victimhood or history. The bodies, argues Linke, are depersonalised and in that way dead people are transformed into 'living' corpses, artistic sculptures (p. 92). Mortality is denied, temporality negated, and in this way the dead are viewed as enduring monumental body architecture (p. 92). Laura Verdi continues this discussion when writing about the symbolic body and rhetoric of power. She starts with the image of Corpus Mysticum Christi (belief that considers all of Christendom to be a holy body of Christ), and then she moves to the body as represented in present-day celebrities.
In the next chapter, Allen S. Weiss picturesquely illustrates how the centuries old impulse of Kyoto residence to have a small garden cannot be neglected in contemporary image of Japan. In one of the shopping malls in Kyoto, in front of one shop, author finds a small stone placed alongside a clear bowl of water with plants floating in it surrounded by six potted plants on the floor (p. 116). He uses this example to criticise landscape theory, which according to Weiss, 'suffers from a narrowly construed sense of representation, where rhetorical tropes figure gardens as pictures to be seen rather than fields to be entered, and analytic forms promote a static ontological model based on perspectival projections rather than a dynamic one found on kinaesthetic transformation' (p. 121).
In the last chapter, Dinesan Vadakkiniyil analyses ritual connected teyyam or deity of Muttappan, from North Malabar, India. Teyyam is vital in symbolic representation of community. It is an image of power that unsettles all other images of state power and caste hierarchy. In the post-colonial period, teyyam is reduced to art, which makes it a part of the structure of the state. The sacred space of teyyam was usually a courtyard of joint families, but due to social, cultural and economic changes the sacred locale of the new teyyam, Muttappan might be a taxi stand, shopping complex or a household of small family.
The main concepts arising from these chapters are art, architecture (closely connected to material of concrete), body and ritual. However one could conclude that, in the end, it all comes down to the body. Body is defined as an agent in making art, building architecture or performing rituals, or body as a material being used. In this sense 'body' is becoming both agent and receiver of processes connected to power, i.e. the main topic of this volume. However, these ideas and conclusions, which this reviewer draws, are not discussed by editor. In her introduction, Judith Kapferer suggests various forms of representation and technical construction on her mind: 'since these both embody and refract dimensions of the socio-political orders in which they achieve expression' (p. 1). These different readings of the same texts are what makes this volume interesting. The volume is comprised with diverse case studies, from decidedly different geographical areas, and based in different historical and cultural contexts that everyone can draw
something unique and connect that with her or his recent research. This diversity and complexity of volume is simultaneously its main weakness. All in all, this is a proper collection of fascinating ethnographies, quality analysis and inspiring questions that could be of use to researchers and students interested in power relations and the symbolic meaning of material phenomenon.
MARIO KATIC
University of Zadar (Croatia)